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SCIENCE VS DOGMA

Sam Bailey, August 24, 2021

“The SCIENCE is settled!” But what is science?

I show how scientists can no longer question dogma and discuss my personal battles with censorship. Science vs Dogma.

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Virus Mania Paperback:

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Virus Mania E-book:

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August 26, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Who Is ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’?

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. | Children’s Health Defense | August 25, 2021

Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci is a household hero to half of America. Drug companies, government officials and the pharma-funded corporate media invoke his name to justify lockdowns, masks and experimental vaccines. The other half do not look on him favourably.

A recent editorial in a leading medical journal urged Congress to make it a felony to publicly criticize Dr. Fauci.

Encouraging his own deification, Dr. Fauci has declared that all those who questioned his pronouncements are “anti-science.”

But who is Dr. Fauci really?

In my new book, I show that Dr. Fauci has done little to earn the sobriquet  “America’s Doctor.”

Instead, he has survived 50 years as the J. Edgar Hoover of public health by consistently prioritizing Big Pharma profits over the welfare of his countrymen, and through mercenary homage to the chemical and agricultural industry, the military industrial complex, the intelligence apparatus and all the other pushers of pills, potions, powders, poisons, pricks and the police state.

During more than a year of painstaking and meticulous research, I unearthed a shocking story that obliterates the obsequious media’s spin on Dr. Fauci … and that will alarm every American — Democrat or Republican — who cares about democracy, our Constitution and the future of our children’s health.

In my book I reveal how Fauci:

  • has been the principal architect of “agency capture” — the subversion of democracy by a drug industry that manipulates regulators like sock puppets.
  • failed dismally over his 50-year career with the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to address the cause, to prevent or cure the exploding epidemics of allergies and chronic disease that Congress charged him with curtailing. The chronic disease pandemic is his enduring legacy. Those ailments now debilitate 54 percent of American children compared to 6 percent when he joined NIAD.
  • repeatedly used fraud, bullying, intimidation, dissembling and falsified science to win approval for worthless and deadly drugs and vaccines.
  • sabotaged safe and effective off-patent therapeutic treatments for AIDS while promoting deadly chemotherapy drugs that almost certainly caused more deaths than HIV.
  • transformed NIAD from a public health regulator into an incubator for pharmaceutical drugs for which he and his trusted deputies often file patents and collect royalties. Dr. Fauci has claimed Moderna vaccine patent rights worth billions of dollars for NIAD and hand-picked at least four of his NIAD underlings to receive $150,000 annually from royalties.
  • exercises dictatorial control over the army of “knowledge-and-innovation” leaders who appear nightly on TV to parrot his orthodoxies and “debunk” his opponents who run his crooked clinical trials globally and who populate the “independent” federal panels that approve and mandate drugs and vaccines — including the committees that allowed the Emergency Use Authorization of COVID-19 vaccines.
  • violated federal law to allow his pharma partners to sacrifice and kill hundreds of impoverished and dark-skinned children and orphans in the U.S and Africa as lab rats in deadly experiments with toxic AIDS and cancer chemotherapies.
  • repeatedly concocted and weaponized fraudulent pandemics, including bird flu (2005), swine flu (2009) and Zika (2015-2016), in order to sell novel vaccines.
  • partnered with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to conduct “gain-of-function” experiments to breed pandemic superbugs in poorly regulated labs in Wuhan, China  and elsewhere, under conditions that virtually guaranteed the escape of weaponized microbes like SARS-CoV-2.

That’s just the short list.

Dr. Fauci and his band of pharma and Silicon Valley profiteers — working with corrupted politicians, captured federal agencies and the bought and brain-dead mainstream media — have used the COVID pandemic to mint billions from vaccines and other profitable medicines.

His disastrous mismanagement ran up one of the biggest COVID death counts among all nations.

Dr. Fauci has led the crusade to suppress functional remedies like Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine which could have avoided 80 percent of the deaths and hospitalizations from COVID and ended the pandemic overnight.

We need to stop Dr. Fauci and the coup d’état against the Constitution, human rights and liberal democracy globally.

Because this book threatens their trillion-dollar vaccine enterprise, Dr. Fauci and his allies in the medical cartel, the media and military will hurl fierce criticism and use censorship — to debunk and silence “The Real Anthony Fauci.”

With your help, this book can play a transformational role in exposing Dr. Fauci as a charlatan and quack and in showing the world that Dr. Fauci, far from being a healer, is one the most noteworthy mass murderers in human history. 

It is my hope that this book will motivate — and mobilize — millions more advocates for truth, health and democracy.

“The Real Anthony Fauci” publication date is Nov. 9. By pre-ordering your copy today, you’ll help push the book to bestseller status, diminishing the powers of the censors to silence me. Thank you.

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The Face Mask Folly in Retrospect

“It’s just a mask”: Global impact of the face mask folly (K. Birb)
Swiss Policy Research | August 22, 2021

It has been known for decades that face masks don’t work against respiratory virus epidemics. Why has much of the world nonetheless fallen for the face mask folly? Ten reasons.

1) The droplet model

Many ‘health authorities’ have relied on the obsolete ‘droplet model’ of virus transmission. If this model were correct, face masks would indeed work. But in reality, respiratory droplets – which by definition cannot be inhaled – play almost no role in virus transmission. Instead, respiratory viruses are transmitted via much smaller aerosols, as well as, possibly, some object surfaces. Face masks don’t work against either of these transmission routes.

2) The Asian paradox

During the first year of the pandemic, several East Asian countries had a very low coronavirus infection rate, and many ‘health experts’ falsely assumed that this was due to face masks. In reality, it was due to very rapid border controls in some countries neighboring China as well as a combination of metabolic and immunologic factors reducing transmission rates. Nevertheless, many East Asian countries eventually got overwhelmed by the coronavirus, too (see charts below).

3) The Czech mirage

In the spring of 2020, the Czech Republic was one of the first European countries that introduced face masks. Because the Czech infection rate initially stayed low, many ‘health experts’ falsely concluded that this was due to the masks. In reality, most of Eastern Europe simply missed the first wave of the epidemic. A few months later, the Czech Republic had the highest infection rate in the world, but by then, much of the world had already introduced face mask mandates.

4) Fake science

For decades, studies have shown that face masks don’t work against respiratory virus epidemics. But with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and increasing political pressure (see below), suddenly studies appeared claiming the opposite. In reality, these studies were a mixture of confounded observational data, unrealistic modelling and lab results, and outright fraud. The most influential fraudulent study certainly was the WHO-commissioned meta-study published in The Lancet.

5) Asymptomatic transmission

Another factor contributing to the implementation of mask mandates was the notion of ‘asymptomatic transmission’. The idea was that everybody should be wearing a mask because even people without symptoms might spread the virus. The importance of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission is still a matter of debate – up to half of all transmission might occur prior to symptom onset –, but either way, face masks simply don’t work against aerosol transmission.

6) Political pressure

Several political factors contributed to the implementation of mask mandates. First, some politicians simply wanted to “do something” against the pandemic; second, some politicians thought face masks might have a “psychological effect” and might “remind” citizens to stay cautious (if anything, it had the opposite effect: creating a ‘false sense of security’); third, some politicians used mask mandates to enforce compliance and pressure the population into accepting mass vaccination.

In addition, there was a vicious circle involving science and politics: politicians claimed to “follow the science”, but scientists followed politics. For instance, the WHO famously admitted that their updated mask guidelines were in response to “political lobbying”, not new evidence. The most influential lobby group was “masks4all”, founded by a “Young Leader” of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

7) The media

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the ‘mass media’ amplified the fraudulent science and the political pressure driving mask mandates. Only some independent media outlets and some truly independent experts questioned the validity of the underlying evidence. However, their voices got suppressed as dubious “fact checking” organizations eagerly enforced official guidelines and throttled or censored many articles and videos critical of face masks.

8) “Surgeons wear masks”

Surgeons wear masks, so they must be effective, right? This was another notion contributing to the face mask misunderstanding. In reality, surgeons wear masks not against viruses, but against much larger bacteria, but more importantly, studies have long shown that even surgeons’ masks make no difference in terms of bacterial wound infections.

9) Misleading memes

To convince low-IQ social media users of the effectiveness of face masks, several unscientific memes were created. The most notorious one probably was the “peeing into your pants” meme, shared by many ‘health experts’ (really). Many of these memes exploited the fact that most people simply don’t realize how small and ubiquitous viral aerosols really are.

10) Doubling down

After mask mandates had been implemented globally and hundreds of billions of dollars had been spent on masks, it soon became obvious – once more – that masks simply don’t work against respiratory virus epidemics (see charts below). But at that point, neither politicians, nor ‘health experts’, nor duped citizens who had to wear them for months wanted to admit this anymore.

Instead, some ‘health authorities’ doubled down and enforced outdoor masking (even on beaches), double-masking, or N95/FFP2 masking, to no avail. The one novel scientific insight produced during the coronavirus pandemic was that even N95/FFP2 mask mandates have made no difference at all.

Sweden: The exception that proved the rule

Only very few countries in the world have resisted the face mask folly. The most famous example certainly is Sweden (see charts below), which has also resisted the lockdown experiment. Naturally, Swedish coronavirus mortality has remained below the European average. But the many vicious attacks against Sweden by much of the international media showed just how difficult it has been to escape the global madness and follow the real science during this bizarre pandemic.

A child wearing a mask at school (more)

How face masks and lockdowns failed

The following charts show that infections have been driven primarily by seasonal and endemic factors, whereas mask mandates and lockdowns have had no discernible impact (charts: IanMSC).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 24, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Comments in response to FDA’s license of Pfizer vax today for 16 years and up

By Meryl Nass, MD | August 23, 2021

The vaccine-induced protection provided by Covid vaccines starts fading within months. In late July, Israel’s Minister of Health said vaccine protection had dropped to 39%. It is not preventing severe illness in Israel and the UK either, though the US CDC changed its collecting methods for breakthrough cases on May 1 to disguise this fact.

While the US government has said it will begin booster doses of mRNA vaccines the week of September 20, there is actually NO evidence that Covid-19 boosters will provide increased protection against infection, or that they are effective against the delta variant or other new variants.

For other vaccines, such as mumps and pertussis, there is no evidence that booster doses after the initial course add measurable protection.

Boosters do raise antibody levels, briefly, which increases the risk of autoimmune adverse effects, immune overactivity and the dire possibility of antibody-enhanced disease (AED), a.k.a. vaccine-enhanced disease (VED), in which those who are vaccinated have a much more severe illness when exposed to Covid than do the unvaccinated.

Since the UK’s top vaccine expert Sir Andrew Pollard told Parliament 2 weeks ago that herd immunity cannot be obtained—in fact it is a “myth”– because the vaccine is not halting transmission, and since the CDC director confirmed this, there is no logical reason to mandate vaccinations for anyone, since the vaccines are not protecting the community.

Mandating vaccinations for the young and healthy, who are at minimal risk from Covid, but at increased risk from Covid vaccinations, is a travesty. The risk of myocarditis after vaccination in a male teenager is 50 times higher than the risk to a 65 year old, according to CDC data. The teenager has many years ahead of him, while the long-term side effects from Covid vaccines have yet to be identified.

Reported deaths following Covid vaccinations are at least 10 times higher than for any vaccine ever approved in the US. Yet FDA and CDC have never explained the causes of these deaths, and they  pretend they do not exist.

This fact alone should have been sufficient to stop FDA granting a license to the Pfizer vaccine.

Here is the convoluted license-plus-authorization letter from FDA. This could be a bait and switch–see the next post.

August 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Robert Dingwall: We Need to Hold Advocates of Mask Mandates to Account

By Toby Young | The Daily Sceptic | August 23, 2021 

Robert Dingwall, a Professor at Nottingham Trent University and a leading sociologist, has written an excellent piece for Social Science Space criticising the imposition of mask mandates, given the paucity of evidence that masks interrupt transmission and the lack of any robust evaluation of the harms masks cause.

First, Professor Dingwall looks at the two main sources of evidence purporting to show that masks are effective.

One is studies at various scales of the impact of mask mandates on reported infection rates. These may compare cities, states, provinces or entire nations using time series data to look for inflections of rates that may be attributable to the mandates. A great deal of mathematical ingenuity has been expended in trying to control for the numerous confounders from biases in reporting, differences in diagnosis, leads and lags in public behaviour in response to the mandates, seasonal fluctuations, mobility – the list is almost endless. By the time these manipulations are complete, though, it is very difficult to conclude that there is any clear and obvious effect. Infection rates do not seem to vary much between comparable communities regardless of the NPIs that have been introduced. I have yet to see a study that identifies a clear and unequivocal benefit from a mask mandate in the form of an obvious inflection point attributable to the intervention. For all the reasons cited, this would be hard to find so perhaps we should not treat its absence as conclusive proof of a lack of benefit so much as something that is consistent with the RCT evidence that any benefit is likely to be minimal.

The other main source of evidence is laboratory studies of the properties of masks using techniques from physics and engineering. Some studies treat masks as a straightforward air filtration experiment. These are well-controlled and reproducible, but bear little resemblance to real-world conditions. The more sophisticated studies use mannikins to create a jet of air carrying inert particles into a controlled space, mimicking human exhalation. Masks can then be used to interrupt the air flow. The resulting measurements are the basis for computational models that provide more general descriptions of the spread of particles, which may be used to create video simulations. These studies are often elegant but suffer familiar problems in generalising to real-world environments. Within reason, the experimenter can manipulate the average velocity of the jet, the size of particles and the permeability of the mask in ways that aim to mimic breathing at different rates, coughing or sneezing. To get reliable measurements, including video or photographic evidence of the dispersion of the particles, the simulated exhalations must enter still air. Air, however, is never still in the real world. In any space there are thermal currents that are moving air around and dispersing exhalations in ways that are not captured, and probably cannot be captured, by the experimenter in a physically meaningful way. The efficacy of masks is also sensitive to the choice of particle size. If the experimenter favours droplets, larger particles, masks capture these quite well – but they also fall quickly to the ground and are unlikely to be inhaled by anyone at a normal social distance. If the experimenter favours aerosols, smaller particles, these are likely to pass through or around cloth masks, whose pore size is typically significantly larger than the aerosol particles. In which case the masks may filter a small proportion of the particles but probably let most through or around the edges. Where higher quality masks have been mandated, the community evidence runs into the same problems as before.

Having concluded that neither body of evidence is remotely persuasive, he then turns to the potential harms that masks do.

The precautionary principle also requires a proper evaluation of the potential harms. Few such studies have actually been done but relevant issues can readily be identified. Four are clearly important. First, they discriminate against a large group of people with communicative disabilities of speech and hearing, with neurodisabilities, such as autism or Aspergers, or with mental health issues, such as prior trauma from confinement as an abused child or as a survivor of sexual assault. Second, they discriminate against people who have medical consequences such as acute skin infections, eye infections or respiratory infections as a result of mask use. In the pre-pandemic world, such people could find workplaces where these issues were avoided but they cannot escape the mandates. Third, there is the impact on child development, particularly in relation to language and social interaction. The American Academy of Pediatrics claimed that there was no evidence for this, but there is a substantial body of research from psychology, education and linguistics establishing the importance of observing faces, particularly for small children. Fourth, and perhaps hardest to measure, there is the impact on community levels of fear and anxiety. This, indeed, has been the ultimate fall-back for committed advocates of masks – they may not have an impact on the transmission of the virus but they remind everyone that there is a pandemic going on and that they should be cautious every time they set foot outside their home – the safety of the home is assumed, of course. The consequence, of course, is that we are nudged towards regarding our fellow human beings as no more than potential vectors of infection. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent. The trust on which everyday life depends in modern societies is fatally compromised.

He concludes that mask mandates should never have been introduced, given the paucity of the evidence and the lack of research into potential harms.

If we do not think it is acceptable to have our lives ordered in ways that discriminate against large sections of the population, that impair the development of children, that damage the mental health of the nation and that make each of us fearful of the other, then it is time to hold the advocates of masking to account for the quality of evidence. It is simply too fragile to justify coercive measures, whether by the state or by private actors. Why has there been so little investment in RCTs? Why are mask advocates now arguing that RCTs would be unethical because the benefits are obvious, when they patently are not? It is more unethical to perpetuate a practice without evidence than to challenge one’s preconceptions. This is truly how science progresses and debate should be conducted.

Worth reading in full.

August 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Ten reasons why the jab must never be mandatory

By Abir Ballan | TCW Defending Freedom | August 21, 2021

COVID-19 presents a high risk of severe illness and death to a few and a negligible risk to the majority of the population. This epidemiological reality lends itself to a focused vaccine approach: offering a safe and efficacious vaccine to high-risk individuals (mostly people above 50 who already have health problems) when the benefit of the intervention clearly outweighs the risk.

Mandatory vaccination has no place in a free society. Public health policy should never be coercive and should always be participatory. Decisions must be made by those who have ‘skin in the game’ and not by bureaucrats or a conflicted elite who will never have to live with the consequences of their actions. The role of public health agencies is to provide the public with accurate information, and allow individuals and communities to make their own decisions.

Seven ethical principles of public health should be at the heart of any public health intervention: non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, health maximisation, efficiency, justice and proportionality. Human rights, scientific facts and common sense should also be applied.

Ten reasons why Covid-19 vaccination should never be mandatory:

1.    Non-maleficence – the Hippocratic duty of ‘first, do no harm’. There is mounting evidence of serious adverse events, particularly myocarditis in the young, following Covid-19 vaccination. Adverse events reporting systems act as a signalling system so immediate action can be taken to prevent greater harm. There are currently strong enough signals to warrant an investigation. Vaccines arealso contra-indicated for individuals with certain health conditions. Vaccination of pregnant/breastfeeding women must be approached with great care – pregnant women were excluded from the vaccine trials; Covid risk is low in healthy women of child-bearing age, while vaccine risks to the foetus/infant cannot be determined yet.

2.    Beneficence – the duty to produce benefit for the individual. Health interventions should be based on individual needs.Vaccination is indicated only when the intervention clearly represents a greater benefit than risk for the individual. This criterion is not met for children and young people, individuals below 60 with no existing health problems, and individuals with past SARS-CoV-2 infection (including asymptomatic infection).

3.    Respect for autonomy – allowing individuals to pursue their wellbeing as they perceive it. Every person has a high value and cannot merely be treated as a means to the end of others’ good. This entails seeking the individual’s informed consent before any medical intervention: informing them of the risks and the benefits of the intervention and getting their voluntary consent without any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion. Currently, individuals cannot be provided with full information on vaccine side effects as no long-term data exists yet. The results of the vaccine trials should be replicated by independent scientists prior to vaccine rollout to the high risk group. Public transparency of all efficacy and safety data is necessary.

4.    Health maximisation – maximising the health of all members of the general public requires a holistic and multi-layered approach: educating the public about a healthy lifestyle to improve their chronic illness, the importance of Vitamin D in fighting respiratory infections, the importance of home-based early treatment, the availability of life saving treatment protocols, safe and effective drugs (such as ivermectin), as well as vaccines for the high-risk group. Vaccinating individuals who incur greater risk from the vaccine than benefit increases total harm.

5.    Efficiency – the duty to produce as many benefits to as many people given limited resources. Vaccinating individuals who do not benefit from the intervention diverts valuable resources away from the vulnerable as well as from far more devastating global health issues like TB, HIV, diabetes, cancer and cardiac diseases.

6.    Justice – all humans have equal worth and no one should be discriminated against based on their health choices. Unfair practices such as denial of services, requirements for employment, restrictions on travel, higher insurance premium for the unvaccinated create a two-tiered society. It breaks social solidarity and cohesion.

7.    Proportionality –the reasonable balance between benefits and costs of an intervention in terms of individual welfare versus collective benefit. Vaccines are designed to confer protection to the vaccinated. It is unethical for a person to incur any vaccine risk or lose personal freedoms for the sake of somebody else.

8.    Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can result from both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The virus can also be transmitted among animals. Even if everyone is vaccinated, transmission will continue and variants will keep on evolving. A Zero Covid strategy is unrealistic and unachievable.

9.    Herd immunity can be reached through a combination of natural infection and vaccination. Natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is broad and long-lasting – more so than vaccine-induced immunity, especially in combating variants. Recovery from infection prevents serious illness if reinfected. It is not necessary to vaccinate the entire planet for the ‘greater good’ of society.

10.  Non-derogable rights, as stated in Article 58 of the Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1958), apply under all circumstances, even under threat of ‘national security’:

‘No state party shall, even in time of emergency threatening the life of the nation, derogate from the Covenant’s guarantees of the right to life; freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and from medical or scientific experimentation without free consent . . . and freedom of thought, conscience and religion. These rights are not derogable under any conditions even for the asserted purpose of preserving the life of the nation.’

We face two scenarios. Either the vaccines work, delivering protection to the vaccinated and eliminating the claim that everyone needs to be vaccinated. Or the vaccines don’t work, and therefore no one should get vaccinated. On both counts, vaccine passports are a pointless ‘public health’ tool that will undermine trust in the medical profession and vaccination programmes. They seem to serve economic, financial, political and ideological agendas. Most fundamentally, they are unethical. They swing the gate wide open for totalitarian rule through a digital social credit system.

Vaccine passports represent the epitome of the greater evil of society. This is the inch we must not yield.

August 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

ARE THERE LIMITS TO GROWTH? – QUESTIONS FOR CORBETT

Corbett • 08/21/2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Be afraid! Be very afraid! A “startling” “new” “scientific” report that “totally confirms” all of The Club of Rome’s fearmongering over The Limits to Growth! . . . But does it really confirm what it’s reported to confirm? And what are the limits to growth, anyway? Join James for the longest and most in-depth edition of Questions For Corbett yet as he does a deeeeeeep dive on The Club of Rome’s infamous reports, its celebrated “vindication,” the truth about overpopulation, and the future of life on earth.

Watch on Archive / BitChute / Minds.com / Odysee / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES

MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. New Research Shows We’re on Schedule.

The Limits to Growth

Meet the WEF

The Club of Rome on The Limits to Growth

Computer predicts the end of civilisation (ABC 1973 report)

Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World 

Models of Doom: A Critique of the Limits to Growth

Thinking about the future: a critique of The limits to growth;

“A response to Sussex”

The Global 2000 Report to President

The Resourceful Earth : A Response to Global 2000

Revisiting the Limits to Growth: Could The Club of Rome Have Been Correct After All?

Limits to Growth, The 30-Year Update

A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality

Computation and the Human Predicament: The Limits to Growth and the limits to computer modeling

Remember MIT’s ‘Club of Rome’ Report

Clubs of Doom and the Limits to Models

Societal Collapse ‘On Schedule’ According To 1972 MIT Study (video report on new study)

Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data by Gaya Herrington

New Confirmation that Climate Models Overstate Atmospheric Warming

Yep, it’s bleak, says expert who tested 1970s end-of-the-world prediction

Ehrlich: Earth will be doomed by 1980! (in 1970)

Just 96 months to save world, says Prince Charles (in 2011)

World has three years left to stop dangerous climate change, warn experts (in June 2017)

UN Warning: Just 3 YEARS Left to Save the Earth!

Short Version of the Limits to Growth (executive summary)

“An Essay on the Principle of Population” (1798)

How & Why Big Oil Conquered the World

Meet Paul Ehrlich, Pseudoscience Charlatan

The Last Word on Overpopulation

This Is What A Demographic Crunch Looks Like

The Underpopulation Crisis

Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications

Episode 406 – Trust the Science!

Shanna Swan: ‘Most couples may have to use assisted reproduction by 2045’

PRC Forum: Julian Simon (S1031) – Full Video

The Bet of the Century: Simon vs. Ehrlich

The Ultimate Resource

Pandora and Hope

The Ultimate Resource 2

Richard Werner Interview – Covid Measures and the Central Controls over the Economy

Prince Philip on what should be done about “overpopulation”

David Rockefeller UN 1994-09-14

Does saving more lives lead to overpopulation? (Gates)

August 22, 2021 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Statement of Non-Compliance with Mandatory Vaccination in Canadian Universities

By Maximilian C. Forte | Zero Anthropology | August 20, 2021

At the start it was not even a university, but Seneca College. Then it was the University of Ottawa. Then Carleton University, the University of Western Ontario, and the University of Toronto. Now it is almost every university in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The law faculty at McGill is also demanding it, presumably to save the university from expensive litigation (an implied threat, and one that strangely assumes that only one side of a debate can litigate in court). If it happens first in the United States, then almost immediately it is copied and pasted into policy in Canada. It is coming everywhere: mandatory vaccination for all faculty, staff, and students.

As a tenured, full Professor in Canada, it is my duty to encourage all faculty to be united in non-compliance with such measures.

Mandatory vaccination pressures are issued allegedly in accordance with “public health”. However, they are mandated through neither parliaments nor legislation, but are instead issued unilaterally by governments under the umbrella of “emergency measures”.

Typically, such vaccination mandates stipulate the following: faculty, staff, and students must show proof of full vaccination in order to access campus and perform their duties. If they do not do so (and some allow refusal only on grounds of medical or religious exemptions), then they must submit to still undefined special measures, such as frequent testing (perhaps twice each week, using rapid antigen tests), and masking at all times and in all spaces on campus.

This will be, for most Canadian faculty, the first if not the only real test of their integrity and dignity, and their purpose as scholars and intellectuals. It is absolutely essential that they not fail this test from the start.

It must be emphasized that this is not a position that can be taken only by non-vaccinated faculty. Action to prohibit and prevent discrimination, and actual abuses of human rights, is a stance to be taken by all faculty, whether fully vaccinated or not.

Rather than following the alternative science narrative tied to the private interests of pharmaceutical corporations and those of politicians, we should expect Canadian universities to encourage critical thinking that—as is now commonly endorsed and celebrated—“speaks truth to power”. This would be in line with Canadian universities’ many recent statements in support of social justice. To see these same universities immediately fail the first real test of their avowed commitments, is both shocking and disappointing.

In particular, mandatory vaccination pressures plainly and indisputably discriminate against employees who are members of particular religious and ethnic communities, in such a way and to such a degree that any claims to upholding “equity, diversity, and inclusivity” become completely unravelled. Not sustaining this commitment in one area, and expecting it to be sustained in other areas, is obviously neither credible nor tenable. Furthermore, the policy which imposes such discrimination is in direct violation of a number of laws and human rights codes, both here in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.

First, faculty should notify senior administrators that at no point, and under no circumstances, can they be compelled to involuntarily release any private information about their personal health status, whether they have been fully vaccinated or not. Such a mandate violates the rights of all, not just some. Such compulsion, that lies outside of the terms and conditions of employment as established by contracts or collective agreements, would be plainly illegal on a number of fronts, including violating existing laws as exist in Quebec and the rest of Canada. At no point when we were interviewed and then hired, were any of us informed of any health requirements to perform our jobs. Established policies for universities to maintain safe working environments place that burden on university administrations—they do not imply any demand for health screening and injection of faculty.

We should be particularly concerned about the apparent effort to pressure people into vaccination. As universities that staunchly uphold ethics in research, following federal requirements, this policy instead negates voluntary informed consent. Consent cannot be mandated, by definition. The policy also violates the principle of do no harm, by not advising members of the community that compliance with this policy could result in experiencing adverse effects, ranging from the mild and trivial, to serious injury requiring hospitalization, and in some cases even death. We have not seen any language warning about adverse reactions and possible death anywhere in the policy announcements.

The compulsion to vaccinate also runs afoul of legal provisions that prohibit discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, religion, and political beliefs.

What universities are also backing is an emergency measure, but they have not furnished any proof of an emergency. Rapidly spreading viruses are common to our university communities, as with each cold and flu that sweeps through a university population every year, even multiple times in a year. The condition of “rapid spread” and “contagiousness” is not, in and of itself, any basis for an “emergency”.

University administrations should rest assured that, as was usual, when employees develop any symptoms of any sickness, they will automatically refrain from coming to campus, as they have done when they had colds or the flu. Non-vaccinated faculty therefore represent no actual nor potential “threat” to the health of the community.

We must also point out that in the early fall of 2009, some Canadian faculty contracted H1N1, and in some cases they had to be absent from class for weeks. At no point did any university administration in Canada manifest any concern about this fact. It is important to recall that in 2009, the World Health Organization declared H1N1 to be a “global pandemic,” under the very same definition it then used for Covid-19. By enacting radically different measures today, Canadian universities are thus directly at odds with their own practice, from the recent past.

Second, if the consequence of non-compliance with such mandates are that faculty must undergo frequent testing—despite having no symptoms—then this would be unfair and discriminatory treatment based on assumed health status, and that too is illegal and lies outside of our terms and conditions of employment. Being a professor at a Canadian university has never been advertised as a position that comes with a health requirement, or a requirement for medical screening in order to perform one’s duties. Moreover, given that it is now solidly established that the fully vaccinated do carry as much viral load as the non-vaccinated, and do transmit the virus, to then subject one group of persons (assumed to be non-vaccinated) to testing, while exempting others, is obviously unfair discrimination.

One can only conclude that such a discriminatory bias is meant to punish a particular group, to hinder them in carrying out their daily work requirements, and to continue singling out healthy people as a problem. It is also obvious psychological harassment, and thus directly violates most Canadian universities’ own published workplace policies.

Before attempting to unilaterally transform the terms and conditions of employment, university administrations must at least sit down and negotiate with faculty unions. Over the past 18 months, we have seen professors suddenly required to work from home, which is work not required under existing terms and conditions of our employment—it is simply not in our job description, and most are not trained for online teaching. Conversely, we have now seen them barred from continuing remote delivery when this is their first choice. Now we see those who are assumed to be non-vaccinated being forced to undergo testing, regardless of symptoms, and regardless of possible natural immunity (which is irrationally and unjustifiably dismissed from this entire discussion).

The discriminatory testing requirement is thus another apparent legal violation, and it has no place at any Canadian university.

The announced policy is a violation of human dignity: it imposes psychological pressure through a regimen of punishment designed to make the performance of one’s ordinary work duties increasingly onerous and unsustainable. It reaches the point where we could argue that it constitutes a breach of contract.

The announced policy also demands that those who are assumed to be non-vaccinated (i.e., they do not furnish proof of full vaccination), must be visibly and publicly set apart from the rest of the community (i.e., masked where others are not masked). Given the prevailing mass psychosis that incites blame, disrespect, and even overt hatred against non-vaccinated persons, to make such non-vaccinated persons openly stand apart is to jeopardize their dignity and integrity.

Third, Canadian universities must not be pressured, and should not comply with any pressures that force their participation in a regime that violates human rights. As we are only now becoming aware of the real extent of atrocities committed at Canadian Residential Schools, which closed only in the late 1990s, Canadian educational institutions ought to be extremely wary of yet another wave of government demands for harsh, segregationist, and punitive measures in the name of “saving” people.

The administration of Canadian universities may reasonably respond that they are merely following government mandates. Any government mandate that is itself an extra-legal measure, imposed without legislative support, is not one that can be used to force a university into also violating either the law or human rights conventions established under international law, to which Canada is a signatory.

Any compliance by an individual with extra-legal extreme measures could also be read as tacit consent, which would then legitimize such measures which are backed neither by established laws, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms nor—it must be noted—are they backed by any scientific support.

The administrations of Canadian universities are best advised to be prudent, and on the right side of both the law and justice. They must immediately rescind any such policy issued under the heading of a vaccine mandate. They should also be aware that failure to do so exposes them to litigation from those at the receiving end of discriminatory treatment, not just from faculty and staff, but from an even larger number of students.

For any Canadian university to try to justify human rights abuses, because they are what the government ordered, is truly Nuremberg-worthy.

Fourth, any mandate must acknowledge that the burden of proof rests with those issuing, following, and enforcing the mandate. In particular, governments and university administrations in Canada must provide fully documented proof of the following—keeping in mind that widely spread fear is not proof of any emergency other than a psychological one:

(1) That there is indeed a current public health emergency, as an objective and verifiable medical fact, and not as an artifact of government decrees. The greatest number of hospitalizations and deaths in Canada occurred during the so-called “first wave” of March-May, 2020. There has been no repetition of those numbers since then. Even then, we are basing this on assumptions: we assume that people were infected with Covid-19, using flawed testing at a time when the virus had not been isolated, and when the amplification cycles were too high—and we did not follow WHO guidelines that advised against relying exclusively on PCR tests in making any clinical diagnosis. We also did not routinely conduct postmortems to establish the cause of death of most elderly victims in the spring of last year. On top of that, it has since come to light that even among those who were already close to the natural end of their lives, they were often subjected to starvation and dehydration—fear kept away many workers from nursing homes, which then resulted in the neglect of residents. We have also learned that, at least in Quebec, such elderly and frail patients were given morphine that suppressed respiration and which, in almost all cases, quickly resulted in death. Thus we do not yet know the exact size and nature of even the “first wave,” the worst and arguably the only real wave we had.

(2) That infection is spread only by the non-vaccinated. We now know definitively that the advertised “vaccines”—those in use in Canada—do not protect the injected from infection, nor do they stop them from spreading the virus, or even falling sick and dying from the virus. If the fully vaccinated can—and do—spread the virus, then any requirement for frequent and rapid testing must equally apply to them. Failure to do so is proof of discrimination on the basis of health characteristics.

(3) That by advertising the need for vaccination, that the university population is not being misled about the real protection such injectable products afford. Countries such as Israel, which vaccinated more fully and more quickly than Canada, are now witnessing a situation where the overwhelming majority of the infected are the fully vaccinated. In both Israel and the UK in recent weeks, the fully vaccinated account for the majority of Covid deaths. Without even speaking of death, which is extremely rare for anyone exposed to Covid—vaccinated or not—in both Europe and the US there are now several hundred thousand cases of serious adverse reactions. Universally it is acknowledged—even by the manufacturers themselves—that the effectiveness of these injectable products is declining to the point where any protection they might have offered increasingly drops to insignificant levels.

(4) That “cases” are a measure of anything significant. The term “cases” has been abused and distorted: anyone deemed to test positive for Covid-19, has been categorized as a “case”. This is despite the fact that they may have had no symptoms, or if they had symptoms they were mild and required no treatment. Typically a real case involves someone needing treatment as a patient, usually in a clinic or hospital. Therefore it needs to be proven that a rising number of so-called “cases” is any reason for extraordinary measures, especially when hospitalizations and deaths are but a tiny fraction of what they were during the first wave.

(5) That natural immunity is not real and does not matter. Nowhere in these mandates is there any language concerning natural immunity—natural immunity is assumed to not exist, or is assumed to be irrelevant. If those issuing, complying with, or enforcing such mandatory vaccination cannot address this scientific point, then the credibility of their entire argument collapses. On that basis alone, non-compliance would be fully justified and warranted.

(6) That healthy people can be assumed to be bearers of sickness. These workplace vaccine mandates all assume that healthy, even young and healthy people, who are not vaccinated are a “problem”. The healthy are assumed immediately and in advance to not only being actual or potential bearers of infection, but also being the sole bearers of infection, and of being solely infectious. Show the scientific support for this argument, and show it overcoming contrary scientific research.

(7) That the so-called “Delta variant” is in fact “more dangerous”. Being more contagious does not equal more danger of sickness and death, as attested to by published government data. Show the scientific proof for the fact that the Delta variant is a significant variation, not just one that varies by 0.3% of characteristics compared to the original Covid-19. Show the data that proves beyond a doubt that it causes more hospitalizations and deaths than the original Covid-19 ever did. Without this proof, the rationale for such mandates is null and void.

(8) That “herd immunity” can only be achieved with vaccination of 100% of a population. In particular, show the scientific support for achieving such immunity by using injectable products that confer no immunity at all. In addition, show the scientific support for the idea that herd immunity discounts natural immunity—see point #5 above.

If there is little or no scientific support for these positions, then there is no rational justification that warrants a mandate issued on medical grounds, in the name of safeguarding public health. In that case, the policy demands non-compliance and it must be rescinded.

If what remains is merely fear of danger, then in certain instances such fear of danger may in itself be a call for urgent psychological therapy or even psychiatric treatment. This is especially the case where fear is sustained in the absence of evidence or in denial of reality, and where it clearly does harm to the persons holding this fear, who then harm others (by issuing discriminatory mandates, for example).

It must also be recalled that during the height of the lockdowns, well before “vaccines” became available, and even before masking became mandatory, millions of Canadian workers operated in close quarters for long hours every day, and yet deadly outbreaks were few and far between. It remains to be shown why now, with vaccination and masking and numbers only a microscopic fraction of what they were, it is now necessary to go to extreme lengths to ensure 100% vaccination, using products that clearly cannot confer immunity. Such products are not only obviously and indisputably ineffective as tools of immunization, they can also be dangerous.

The announced measures, we already know, will do absolutely nothing to curb the spread of the virus. Knowing that means the policy is being followed for reasons not having to do with public health. We should thus reaffirm our commitment to non-compliance with this policy.

Lastly, if what universities really fear is exposure to litigation, then there is a very simple answer to this concern: ask all those who wish to access campus to sign a waiver that the university bears no responsibility for anyone who may become ill on campus (assuming it can even be proved they became ill on campus). If there is widespread fear of infection, a university could also allow for continued working and learning from home for those who prefer that option. Whatever the option may be, every possible option should be investigated without resorting to extreme and discriminatory measures that violate human rights and the rights of citizenship.

[Canadian faculty are encouraged to adopt and or adapt this statement, in whole or in part, for use in their individual institutional settings, and they can do so without formally crediting this statement, even though it is published under a Creative Commons license. French translation follows.]

DÉCLARATION DE NON-CONFORMITÉ À LA VACCINATION OBLIGATOIRE DANS LES UNIVERSITÉS CANADIENNES

August 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

This Week in the New Normal #3

OffGuardian | August 22, 2021

1. UNIVERSITIES PUNISHING UNVACCINATED STUDENTS

Universities in the United States are issuing fines to any students who refused to take the Covid “vaccine”, according to a report from Zero Hedge.

West Virginia Wesleyan College, announced a few weeks ago that it will fine any unvaccinated student $750. Whilst Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University will fine them $100 per week increasing in $25 increments (equal to $2250 for the first semester).

Not only that, but unvaccinated students will also be denied internet access. In the modern age, attempting to function in an academic institution without access to the internet, emails or digital learning resources is almost impossible. So this is essentially a mandate under any other name.

Some bigger colleges have already started putting full-on mandates in place.

Other campuses are instituting “testing fees” of over $1500, but only for the unvaccinated. This is in spite of the fact vaccinated people are capable of testing positive for Covid.

2. “THE GREAT JOBS RESET”

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is the big daddy when it comes to pushing out the Great Reset, it’s the brainchild of their Chairman Klaus Schwab after all, and this past week they have unveiled their latest project. It’s called the “Jobs Reset Summit”.

The summit discusses, among other things, the alleged “impact of the pandemic” on employment. Bemoaning the loss of an estimated 255 million full-time jobs from the global economy, without ever mentioning (naturally) that these job losses had nothing to do with Covid, and everything to do with lockdown policies which were never intended to stop the spread of any virus.

The most alarming position to come out of this summit, however, was definitely a tweet that stated:

Get your COVID-19 jab – or you could face consequences from your employer #COVID19 #JobsReset21

Clearly supporting the idea that unvaccinated people should face censure, or even termination, from their employers. Just like they did with their “You’ll own nothing and be happy” article, they deleted the tweet and re-titled the article after a somewhat negative reaction.

Fortunately, once something is on the internet, it’s there forever.

3. YET MORE CASHLESS SOCIETY BS

The march toward a cashless society continues apace. We’ve been told already that cash is bad for the environment, and also contaminated with germs and drugs. Now the press is simply treating the cashless future as a fait acompli

This week alone there are articles about how Brazil, and India, and Saudi Arabia will all be cashless in the near future. China isn’t far behind.

Forgettable Guardian columnists are writing faux nostalgia puff-pieces about missing cash when it’s gone. Parishes are ditching collection plates for QR codes.

It seems the argument phase is over, definitely over. And what brought that on? Well Covid, of course. Multiple publications have been more than clear that the “pandemic” produced a “the viral spread of cashless society” and that a “cashless society is closer thanks to corona”.

It seems the totally real (and not-at-all agenda-driven) pandemic has accidentally facilitated the rise of a highly controlling government policy, which was around years before “Covid” even existed.

Weird how many times that’s happened in the last 18 months.

4. NO TRANSPLANTS FOR THE UNVAXXED

This week hospitals in both the USA and Ireland have admitted to removing unvaccinated patients from the donor organ waiting list.

Beaumont Hospital in Ireland sent out letters recommending doctors remove all unvaccinated patients from the kidney transplant waiting list. Whilst a man in Washington state was told he would not be considered for a heart transplant as long as he declined the Covid jab. Other patients in the same hospital, the University of Washington Medical Center, are reportedly in the same position.

The good news is that the public outcry was so intense, that the Beaumont hospital was forced to reverse its decision within days of the story breaking. But this policy will not go away, and just become more covert as it spreads.

BONUS: CREEPY SPEECH OF THE WEEK

Whoever runs the corporate puppet that lives inside Justin Trudeau’s skin has clearly decided it’s time for him to shake his rather inneffectual image and try and become a forceful public speaker. In a “strongman” speech in the run-up to the Canadian elections, Trudeau worked himself into a frenzy on vaccination:

https://twitter.com/punditclass/status/1428537571676618756?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1428537571676618756%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Foff-guardian.org%2F2021%2F08%2F22%2Fthis-week-in-the-new-normal-3%2F

“If you don’t want to get vaccinated, that’s your choice. But don’t think you can get on a plane or a train beside vaccinated people and put them at risk!”

A tip for the future though – if you’re going to have the blandest man in the world try and excite a crowd, give him more than 80 people to work with. That said, however poorly delivered and however lukewarm the reception, the sentiment itself is very unsettling. Full on segregation in Canada. As someone remarked to us on Telegram, “instead of the back of the bus, it’s now no bus at all.”

IT’S NOT ALL BAD…

We’ve got the usual protests in France, Australia and all over the world to report this week. It’s also in the news that Denmark will be abandoning all Coronavirus measures from October first… but whether that’s truly good news remains to be seen.

However, this week’s main entry for INAB comes in the form of a music video that tells the whole story:

You can follow Lukas Lion on youtube or Instagram, and stream the song on Spotify, Apple music and other platforms.

We’d also remind everyone in the UK that next Saturday, the 28th August, is the Unite for Freedom “Freedom Carnival” protest in London (and maybe other cities around the country). You can also follow their telegram channel for updates.

***

All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the Department of Homeland Security and Council on Foreign Relations dialling up the “terrorism threat”, or Australia’s new “national resilience centre”.

August 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

The Vapor, the Hot Hat, & the Witches’ Potion

By Margaret Anna Alice | Through The Looking Glass | August 3, 2021

Once upon a time in a prosperous land, a rumor swept across the kingdom that there was an invisible vapor floating through the air. Many vapors had come before, but this one was so extraordinary, it called for an extraordinary response.

This vapor, the town criers cried, could kill you at any time, anywhere. You could get it by talking, breathing, or singing. You could get it by standing or walking too closely to someone. You could even get it by playing. And the scariest thing of all—you could get it and not even know you had it.

The only way to escape was to hide indoors, keep away from people, and rub your hands with a clear jelly every time you touched something. Merchants stopped trading, apprentices stopped learning, and people stopped seeing people.

Every day, the town criers yelled out the number of people who had caught the vapor, although most didn’t know it since they felt the same as usual—just a lot more scared. They only learned they had it because of a certain spell a sorcerer had written down before the vapor came. The sorcerer had said it wasn’t supposed to be cast for vapors and couldn’t tell people if they had caught a vapor or not. But the sorcerer had died, and the king’s counselors decided to cast the spell, anyway, and that is how people found out they had the vapor.

The town criers shouted the latest death tolls so often their voices grew hoarse. Almost every one who died was very, very old or very, very sick or very, very fat. Hardly anyone else died, and at the end of the year, it would turn out about the same number had died as had in other years.

Still, it was a very scary vapor, and the entire kingdom had to change for the good of the public. The land was no longer prosperous, but the king just minted more coins and tossed them out to his subjects so they wouldn’t notice right away.

Eventually, people were told they could come out of hiding and the marketplace could open back up if everyone followed a few rules. They had to wear a hot, scratchy hat that covered their ears and eyes so the vapor couldn’t get into their earholes or eyeholes. They had to hop five times forward and five times backward if they accidentally got too close to another person. And, of course, they had to rub their hands with jelly after touching anything.

Some people thought the hats looked silly and were even a little dangerous since they made it hard for them to hear and see and made them sweat in the summer. The hopping took so much time, people weren’t able to get much done. When those people didn’t wear the hats or hop around, the rest of the people got very, very angry and said it was their fault people were dying and getting sick and couldn’t live the way they used to live. Some even took to wearing two or more hats for extra protection against the anti-hatters and anti-hoppers.

Every so often, the king would tell people to hide back inside again because too many people were catching the vapor. They couldn’t work or shop or visit people they loved. There wasn’t much to do besides lie around listening to the town criers, who always let people know how scared and angry and resentful they should all feel, especially toward the anti-hatters and anti-hoppers.

Suddenly, people started feeling more hopeful. A few witches who were richer than all the world’s kingdoms and queendoms combined offered to make a potion people would need to swallow every so often to keep them safe from the vapor—but it would only work if everyone drank it together.

It took a few months, but eventually the witches each had their own flavor—grape and orange and tropical punch—and they were ready to pour them into people’s mouths. Whenever potions had been made in the past, the witches had had to spend years and years making sure it was safe before giving it to people. This time, though, the vapor was so scary, they skipped all those steps so people could be saved sooner. They even got the king to issue a special decree so no one could hurt the witches if anything bad happened to them after drinking the potion. The king gathered three-quarters of the coins he had collected from the people that year and presented them to the witches.

Almost everybody couldn’t wait to drink the grape or orange or tropical punch potion. They bragged about going to get it and told everyone after they got their first and second drinks. When they came across someone who didn’t want to drink it, they got very, very cross. The town criers told everyone to yell at the anti-drinkers because it was their fault they couldn’t go back to life like it was before the vapor.

Something strange happened after people started drinking the potion. Some of them caught the vapor, anyway, but that was because it was a version of the vapor the witches hadn’t planned for—still, it was important to drink both doses of the potion because it was better than not drinking them. To be safe, though, the town criers said they should go back to wearing hot hats and hopping—although most hadn’t stopped to begin with because they were afraid of what would happen if they did (or worse, they might be mistaken for an anti-hatter, anti-hopper, or anti-drinker).

Even stranger, some of the people who had drunk the potion died either right after or not long after drinking it. Unlike the people who died from the vapor, these people were often very, very young or very, very healthy or very, very fit. The town criers never shouted about these deaths. If anyone brought it up, they called them an anti-hatter, anti-hopper, and anti-drinker.

Being an anti-drinker was the worst of all because everyone knows you need to drink to survive. If you’re against drinking the potion, you must surely be against drinking water, too, and we all know you can’t live without drinking water.

Not everyone who drank the potion died. Some just had peculiar things happen to their bodies. They shook all the time or got rare diseases or noticed parts of their bodies stopped working. They were bedridden or lame or hurt in different ways and couldn’t live the way they did before or even after the vapor. The town criers didn’t tell anyone about these people, either.

And then there were the drinkers who felt perfectly fine … for now. The potion had never been tried for longer than a few months, so no one was really sure what would happen in the next year or two or longer. It was also a different kind of potion than anyone had ever drunk before. This potion changed something inside you that could never be undone. People would also need to drink new versions of the potion every few months, and the king would need to continue giving three-quarters of the kingdom’s coins to the witches forever, or at least as long as the kingdom existed.

All the surviving drinkers were grateful to the witches and thanked them for saving their lives. They proudly displayed a mark on their chin that meant they’d drunk the potion. The ones who’d drunk it twice had two marks.

Those who didn’t have any marks were to blame for the kingdom’s problems. They weren’t permitted to shop in the marketplace or work or apprentice or take part in any public activities. They were shamed and shunned for being a threat to the people of the land. These people started to feel like they should leave the kingdom, but they weren’t allowed to travel without the double marks, and besides, all the other kingdoms and queendoms were the same as theirs, anyway. There wasn’t anyplace left where people weren’t afraid of the vapor and where they didn’t demand that everyone drink the potion.

Soon, the king decided the anti-drinkers were so dangerous, they would need to be locked in a dungeon until they agreed to drink the potion. They were free to choose whichever flavor they liked. If they decided not to drink, they would simply remain in the dungeon. It was entirely up to them.

One year passed, and then another. There were fewer and fewer people left in the kingdom. Eventually, so few people were left, the king could no longer collect enough coins to pay the witches. The rest of the kingdoms and queendoms around the world were in the same fix. They decided to join together into one king-queendom so they could collect enough coins to buy the potion.

After eight more years passed, there weren’t enough people left in all the world to cover the witches’ dues. The rulers decided everything that belonged to the people now belonged to the king-queendom. The people could still live in their hovels, but they wouldn’t own anything. They could earn their keep through labor—indeed, they might be put to work making the potion!

People no longer needed to decide what they wanted to do or be in life because the king-queendom would decide for them. People didn’t need to pay for anything because all the subjects got equally small amounts of the necessities. Everyone looked the same, acted the same, and thought the same.

Most people didn’t remember what it was like before the vapor. Some didn’t even know there was such a time.

The rulers, on the other hand, never wanted for anything. Nor did their friends, the town criers. The witches were the wealthiest of all—and deservedly so, as they had saved the world from the deadly vapor.

It wasn’t long before there were no more subjects. The rulers, the counselors, the town criers, and the witches had all the earth’s riches to themselves, and they lived happily ever after.

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August 22, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

GM recall of all Chevy Bolts due to battery fire risk likely to cost $1 billion

Chevy Bolt [image credit: GM Authority]
TallBloke’s Talkshop | August 20, 2021

No hope of ever breaking even on that model now, if there was any to start with. Another edition of the recurring lithium-ion safety issue in the world of EVs: battery ’emissions’. 
– – –
DETROIT (AP) — General Motors is recalling all Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles sold worldwide to fix a battery problem that could cause fires.

The recall raises questions about lithium ion batteries, which now are used in nearly all electric vehicles.

President Joe Biden wants to convert 50% of the U.S. vehicle fleet from internal combustion to electricity by 2050 as part of a broader effort to fight climate change.

The recall announced Friday adds about 73,000 Bolts from the 2019 through 2022 model years to a previous recall of 69,000 older Bolts.

GM said that in rare cases the batteries have two manufacturing defects that can cause fires.

The Detroit-based automaker said it will replace the battery modules in all the vehicles.

The move will cost the company about $1 billion.

GM said owners should limit charging to 90% of battery capacity. The Bolts, including a new SUV, should be parked outdoors until the modes are replaced.

Continued here.


August 21, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Understanding Wildfires and Climate and How we can Prevent Megafires

Jim Steele | August 15, 2021

Video explaining the ecology of wildfires and why California is more prone to fires than the rest of the USA.

August 21, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment