Saskatchewan’s 811 HealthLine offers doctor assisted suicide — including to some callers which are dialling in for mental health concerns.
The revelation comes as People’s Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier posted a video of himself calling the hotline with a friend.
An automated voice on the end of the line gives the caller five options: to deal with COVID-19 concerns, to speak with a registered nurse, to speak with a mental health and addictions clinician, to speak with poison control, and finally, an offer for an assisted dying program.
“Press five if you wish to leave a message with a medical assistance in dying program,” the automated voice says.
According to the Government of Saskatchewan, the HealthLine 811 is a “confidential, 24-hour health and mental health and addictions advice, education and support telephone line available to the people of Saskatchewan.”
“It is staffed by experienced and specially trained Registered Nurses, Registered Psychiatric Nurses, and Registered Social Workers.”
Assisted suicide was legalized in Canada in 2016. Under the Criminal Code, only those with a terminal illness were eligible initially. But the Trudeau Liberals massively expanded eligibility to include those with a disability. Those suffering solely from a mental illness will be eligible for assisted dying beginning March 2023.
As previously reported by The Counter Signal, medical assistance in dying accounted for 3.3% (10,064) of all deaths in Canada last year. In 2020, there were 7,630 MAID deaths, and in 2019 there were 5,661, meaning after two years of lockdowns, euthanasia requests have nearly doubled.
Recently, the Canadian Virtual Hospice has created an “activity book” to help children “explore their feelings” about doctor-assisted dying “by someone in your life.”
And earlier this month, sources at Veterans Affairs Canada revealed that an employee casually offered euthanasia to a CAF veteran struggling with a brain injury and PTSD.
Sources told Global News that the veteran was improving, both physically and mentally, following a traumatic brain injury received while serving in the line of duty. The casual offer to be killed impeded progress, sources said.
One of the weirdest things about the past two years is that it is obvious that there has been a massive power shift in the world, away from national governments towards some supranational collective that is somehow able to force governments throughout the world to all follow the same disastrous policies simultaneously (overriding Constitutions, laws, scientific best practices, and common sense). But it is not entirely clear who “they” are.
So, following up on my last article, I want to take a stab at defining who “they” are — as in, who are the people:
• developing and releasing bioweapons into the population;
• suppressing safe and effective treatments;
• destroying the global economy via lockdowns;
• pushing dangerous shots with negative efficacy that maim, kill, and cause infertility at an astonishing rate; and
• implementing global totalitarianism including the suspension of Constitutional rights and the introduction of central bank digital currencies, 24/7/365 digital surveillance, and vaccine/carbon/ESG passports.
Said simply who are the people pushing the global economy and society towards a permanent pandemic?
I look forward to reading your comments because I imagine there will be sharp disagreement about the components of the various layers in this schema.
The top of the pyramid
The hardest part to figure out is who is at the top? We know some of the players at the top of the pyramid:
• Pfizer, Moderna, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Merck, J&J, and AstraZeneca — and their 4.4 million employees worldwide and $1 trillion a year in revenue;
• The World Economic Forum and its 1,000 member companies each with $5+ billion a year in revenue that have been meeting for 50 years to synchronize the interests of elites;
• The 2,000 members of the Davos group who meet annually in Switzerland to coordinate global governance and business;
• The World Health Organization that is clearly working for the cartel;
• The 205 members of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the 539 billionaires in China; and
• The western billionaires — Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Soros, Bloomberg, Steyer — who want to remake the world in their own twisted image.
But who am I leaving out? The bankers? The central banks? Old money?
The Mercenaries
The upper crust then bring in the mercenaries to actually do the work to create the new dystopian reality:
• The consulting firms — McKinsey mainly, and to a lesser degree Deloitte, Bain, and PwC — design the global vaccine campaigns;
• The PR firms — Edelman, Ogilvy (that works with the CDC), Hill + Knowlton (that came up with the tobacco playbook that is now used by all toxic industries), Burson Cohn Wolfe (that formerly worked with the Clintons) — create the fictitious reality that forces the peasants to obey and makes the elites richer;
• And for the really heavy lifting they bring in the private intelligence companies — Black Cube, SCL Group, NSO Group, etc. who can do anything from entrapping a politician, rigging an election, or overthrowing a government using the latest military grade tools and human assets.
Our reality is manufactured by these mercenaries.
Asset management firms
The largest shareholders in pharmaceutical companies are the asset management companies — BlackRock ($10 trillion in assets), Vanguard ($7.2 trillion), State Street ($4.14 trillion), etc. These companies are throwing their weight around these days by voting the shares of the assets that they hold on behalf of investors. That gives them the ability to hire and fire the C-suite executives who run these companies.
The paradox though of the asset management companies is that they are investing OUR pension and retirement funds. If you hold any equities in a retirement, mutual, or pension fund chances are that you own shares in the pharmaceutical companies that are trying to enslave and kill us — but BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and the rest are voting YOUR shares at the annual meeting. It’s a crazy system.
CIA, NSA, Department of Defense
This is the part that I cannot figure out. According to Jeffrey Sachs, who is as pro-establishment as they come, SARS-CoV-2 began as a bioweapon developed in the United States. We know that BARDA and DARPA are deep into the development of bioweapons and they fund monsters like Ralph Baric at UNC and Peter Daszak at EcoHealth Alliance (who Fauci used as a pass through to get money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for gain-of-function research when it was officially banned in the United States).
But here’s the thing — CIA, NSA, and DoD have the electronic records that show what was going on at these labs and they have the intercepted phone calls when things go wrong at these labs (because they have a record of all phone calls, emails, and wire transfers in this country). They also have the data that show that these shots do not work and cause harms at unprecedented levels. But instead of doing anything about it — instead of protecting national security — the CIA is using its venture capital company to make the mRNA used in Covid booster shots that are going to kill lots of Americans.
So how are we to understand the official government military and intelligence agencies in light of these facts? In a former era ostensibly they were motivated to defeat the Soviet Union. And now they’re just what — independent autonomous grifters completely unmoored from the countries they claim to represent? Are the CIA, NSA, and DoD just warlords in the global economy trying to secure as much wealth for themselves as possible?
It sure looks that way.
Mainstream media and social media
This is too obvious to even bother to elaborate on. CNN, MSNBC, the Atlantic, New Yorker, Washington Post, Guardian, etc. — all work for the cartel because the cartel pays their bills.
And the social media giants — Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, Google/YouTube — all censor critical thinkers on behalf of the cartel. No reasonable person disputes this.
The useful idiots in white coats
FDA/CDC/NIH and the White House all work directly for the cartel. There’s no point in even talking about them, what Pharma wants is what they do every time.
The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists all work for the cartel.
There are 191,000 professors in American medical schools and, with a few exceptions, they are owned body, mind, and soul by the cartel.
There are about 1 million doctors in the U.S. but only a few hundred have done the right thing and spoken out against the genocide over the past two years.
Allopathic medicine in the U.S. is now a tool of Pharma Fascism.
We have entered the era of iatrogenocide
My point in mapping out the guilty parties above is to underscore the fact that we live in a society dedicated to iatrogenocide — the mass killing of a population by scientific and medical professionals. (Hat tip to Mathew Crawford for re-introducing us to this term). Our entire economy is built around iatrogenocide — killing, covering it up, and keeping it going, in the name of public health, progress, and science(TM).
As I wrote in my last article, the motivations for these various actors, who walk amongst us and include many of the most respected members of society, include:
1. profit;
2. mental capture (because the base determines the superstructure);
3. an immortality project;
4. mass formation;
5. survival;
6. eugenics;
7. evil itself;
8. excitement/entertainment;
9. depopulation; and
10. the [alleged] possibility that this is all a play by the Chinese Communist Party for world domination.
Now I wonder though if all of these actors and factors have something in common? What’s the ideology/worldview driving them? Even if we grant that the base determines the superstructure (the mode of production of any era determines the values of that society) what exactly is the ideological superstructure that connects all of this together?
On my notepad I sketched out a possible list: capitalism? winning? success? fitting in? liberalism? post liberalism? postmodernism? colonialism? narcissism? communism? fascism? totalitarianism?
And where I came out is that I think our society is guided by three values:
Idolatry (these people think that they are gods and they really like playing god);
Domination (these people gain pleasure from power over others, in their worldview everyone and everything is an object to be conquered); and
Tribalism (these people operate from the belief that their group must win at all costs, the dendrites necessary to get along with others are dead).
When you combine idolatry, domination, and tribalism, what you get is Pharma Fascism throughout the developed world.
That’s what we’re up against. That’s who and what we must overthrow in the revolution.
So then our antidote becomes:
A reverence for the truly sacred (God, family, nature, and love);
Intersubjectivity — listening to and honoring the spark of the divine in others; and
Ethics, rationality, and science — the means of resolving differences that have been lost in the global coup d’etat by the junk science mass murdering Pharma cartel.
Two leading children’s hospitals — Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital and Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. — have generated a massive brouhaha surrounding their marketing of “gender-affirming” hysterectomies for young women caught up in the swirl of gender confusion.
A few years ago, U.S. hospital systems reported a “downward trend in traditional hysterectomy,” noting a growing preference — especially among younger women — for less radical measures, but now it would appear that children’s hospitals are trumpeting less “traditional” rationales for invasive hysterectomies to keep surgical revenues flowing.
Hysterectomy involves the inpatient or outpatient surgical removal of the uterus — and sometimes also “the cervix, ovaries, Fallopian tubes, and other surrounding structures” — either vaginally, abdominally or laparoscopically (with or without robotic help).
Although an estimated half a million U.S. women undergo hysterectomies annually, some in the medical community — and many women’s health advocates — condemn the surgery’s overuse and its disproportionate targeting of minority populations.
A 2021 study noted a decades-long pattern of disproportionately higher rates of hysterectomy in Black compared to white women “in multiple settings and geographies,” citing a 39% higher rate in North Carolina (2011–2013) as one example.
One health expert estimates 9 out of 10 hysterectomies are medically unnecessary, with a variety of less drastic alternatives available for the procedure’s heretofore most common indications, including abnormal uterine bleeding and noncancerous growths called uterine fibroids.
The head of the National Women’s Health Network “advise[s] any woman who is not in a life-threatening situation to see someone else besides a surgeon to explore nonsurgical options first.”
The published literature documents many downsides to hysterectomy — including anatomical complications, urinary incontinence, depression and anxiety in the shorter term, and increased long-term risks for conditions ranging from heart disease, stroke and metabolic disease to cancer, bone loss and cognitive decline.
Hysterectomy’s risks are especially pronounced for women who have their reproductive organ(s) removed at younger ages.
In one study, women who had their uterus removed before age 35 had risks of coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure that were 2.5-fold and 4.6-fold higher, respectively, than for age-matched women who had not gone under the knife, and another study found that women who had the surgery before age 50 were more likely to develop hypertension.
For girls taking “masculinizing” testosterone before they head into surgery, Cleveland Clinic doctors admit that the “cross-sex” hormone treatment can affect surgical outcomes, including delaying tissue healing and contributing to blood or heart problems.
Disturbingly, they also acknowledge that research on trans hysterectomy has focused “more on feasibility than on outcomes.”
Weaponized surgery
One reason the promotion of hysterectomy in very young women should give pause has to do with the United States’ “long and sordid” track record with eugenics and involuntary sterilization.
In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, upheld a Virginia law authorizing mandatory sterilization of institutionalized women who were epileptic or arbitrarily deemed “feeble minded,” a decision that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes — an avowed eugenicist — infamously justified in his statement, “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. … Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
That legal precedent enabled tens of thousands of forced sterilizations throughout the 20th century — either via hysterectomy or tubal ligation (the cutting, tying or blocking of the Fallopian tubes) — especially among women who were poor, disabled, non-white or incarcerated.
Contrary to popular belief, forced surgical sterilization is not a thing of the past — 31 states and Washington, D.C., still have laws on the books allowing it, including 17 states that okay it for children with disabilities; two states, Iowa and Nevada, passed laws in 2019.
In 2020, a whistleblower came forward describing mass hysterectomies “without full consent or for uncertain medical reasons” among immigrants at a Georgia detention center, and there is evidence that the criminal justice system weaponizes sterilization for both female and male prisoners, with “no way to know how many ‘off the record’ sterilization [courtroom] deals happen every year.”
The medical-industrial complex
In 2018, investigative reporter Jennifer Bilek documented a chilling reason for the “explosion in transgender medical infrastructure,” which, she argued, has little to do with civil rights and a lot to do with “moneyed interests.”
Describing the massive funding channeled from billionaires, “governments … technology and pharmaceutical corporations to institutionalize and normalize transgenderism as a lifestyle choice” — conveniently landing transgenderism and its lifelong customers “square in the middle of the medical industrial complex” — Bilek concluded, “can hardly be a coincidence when the very thing absolutely essential to those transitioning are pharmaceuticals and technology.”
Among the corporate players that are “all-in” are COVID-19 vaccine makers Janssen/Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer as well as kid-brainwashing and surveillance giants like Google, which is also in the healthcare business.
Bilek noted that Boston Children’s Hospital — rated by U.S. News & World Report as one of the nation’s “best children’s hospitals” — opened its “gender clinic” in 2007, bragging about having been “the first pediatric and adolescent health program in the United States” to do so. Fifteen years later, there are almost 50 such clinics across the nation.
Bilek wrote, “With the medical infrastructure being built, doctors being trained for various surgeries, clinics opening at warp speed, and the media celebrating it, transgenderism is poised for growth.”
As a 2019 editorial in Obstetrics and Gynecologyenthused, another factor facilitating the surgical gold rush has been steadily increasing insurance company willingness to cover “gender-affirming surgical care,” despite “knowledge gaps” and the lack of any “evidence-based guidelines to define optimal care surrounding many aspects of these surgeries.”
The recent media hoopla focused on the Boston hospital’s website promotion of “gender-affirming hysterectomies” — with or without removal of the ovaries, and with the additional option of surgically constructing a penis — for girls who, as some discreetly put it, are lacking “a gynecologic disease that would traditionally indicate hysterectomy.”
After the media maelstrom drew attention to Boston Children’s Hospital’s willingness to cut off the breasts of 15-year-old girls and carry out “feminizing” vaginoplasty on 17-year-old boys (the first step being the removal of the scrotum and testes), the hospital hastened to declare that for hysterectomies, at least, girls have to be 18 or older.
At Children’s National, meanwhile, the Pediatric Gynecology Program listed “gender-affirming hysterectomy” as a service “available for patients between the ages of 0-21” — until fierce public scrutiny prompted it to scrub its website — see the archived webpage here and cleansed webpage here.
When the author of TikTok and Substack posts decided to call the Washington, D.C., hospital and clarify its policies — describing her efforts as “a mini-Project Veritas” — Children’s National staff stated in a recorded conversation that gender-affirming hysterectomies were available for “16-year-olds and ‘much younger’ children.”
The hospital says the recording is “not accurate” and that patients must be at least 18 years old.
Take it all out?
In one of the widely-publicized Boston Children’s Hospital videos, pediatric gynecologist and transgender specialist Dr. Frances Grimstad explained, “Some gender-affirming hysterectomies will also include the removal of the ovaries,” a procedure called a bilateral oophorectomy.
Due to the sudden loss of estrogen, removal of the ovaries triggers immediate “surgical menopause,” with effects “more acute” than natural menopause “because the hormonal changes will happen suddenly rather than over several years.”
Keeping the ovaries is not necessarily protective; however, women who forego ovary removal at the time of hysterectomy are twice as likely to experience ovarian failure compared to women who keep their uterus, and are likely to go through menopause within five years.
As for the cervix, a concerned hospital researcher was already pointing out in the early 1990s that the cervix “is not a useless organ” and cautioning against its removal during total hysterectomy.
Risks associated with cervical removal, the researcher noted, include the potential for bladder and bowel dysfunction (due to “loss of nerve ganglia closely associated with the cervix”), increased morbidity during and after the operation, vaginal shortening, scar tissue that prevents healing and organs sagging or no longer staying in place (prolapse).
The sudden menopause brought on by removal of both ovaries, says Healthline, increases the likelihood of cognitive impairment, “including dementia and Parkinsonism,” with various studies suggesting that surgical menopause before the age of natural menopause makes women “vulnerable to changes in the brain that may alter cognitive function over the long term.”
Studies in rats indicate that the removal of the uterus and ovaries causes changes in the brain’s memory center (the hippocampus), inducing cell damage and cell death, and affecting the animals’ “ability to learn, remember and function.”
This type of study has prompted medical experts to question the dogma that “the non-pregnant uterus is dormant” and serves no purpose, with one physician stating, “The antiquated concept that the uterus is a disposable organ needs to be put to bed.”
“I describe these as losing my train of thought, basic forgetfulness and confusion, lower attention span, and most problematic — word finding. … And I know that I didn’t get DUMBER until after I had that surgery. … But if someone told me I might become a blithering idiot who no longer felt like she could function with her colleagues and peers … well, that definitely would’ve made me think twice, at least back then when I could think straight.”
No turning back
Wall Street Journal writer Abigail Shrier, in her 2020 book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” dissected the phenomena of “social contagion,” social media “influencers” and “online shaming” and also described the explosion of “detransitioners” — girls who medically transition, “only to regret it and attempt to reverse course.”
As Shrier summarized, the detransitioners “now believed that their own mental health struggles had made them vulnerable to social media and peer pressure,” which had encouraged them to “equate cross-sex hormones and gender surgery with salvation” — but with “far too few safeguards.”
The informants described in her chapter titled “The Regret” came to question “a medical system that fast-tracks [trans-identified teens’] demands without regard for their actual welfare.”
A transgender specialist at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles has a flippant solution for girls who undergo “chest surgery” (breast removal), stating, “if you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them.”
However, fake breasts (and more surgery) are not meaningful solutions, nor is any comparable back-pedaling possible for girls who get their uterus removed.
One of Shrier’s informants found this out the hard way.
Acceding to a doctor’s recommendation to get a hysterectomy after uterine atrophy caused by accumulated testosterone left her “doubled over in pain … she awakened without a uterus [and] she realized her entire gender journey had been a terrible mistake.”
What about informed consent?
As the stories gathered by Shrier and numerous other testimonials indicate, for some, medical transition can have negative mental and physical consequences that were unforeseen.
Is the medical establishment providing young women — and, when involved, their parents — with fully informed consent about problems such as testosterone addiction and, in the case of hysterectomy, the increased risks of heart disease, cognitive decline and other long-term impacts?
Neuroscientists agree that the human brain takes about 25 years to develop, with “risk management and long-term planning abilities” not “kick[ing] into high gear” until then, but in many cases, young women are making medical transition decisions much earlier and without parental oversight.
At the close of “Irreversible Damage,” Shrier — whose book admittedly made waves — wryly observed that “expressing concern about teens suddenly identifying as trans has become politically unwise and socially verboten.”
For those able to set aside the intense politicization for a good-faith consideration of young women’s welfare, the fact that some of the nation’s top children’s hospitals are, like pied pipers, enticing credulous girls into surgery — with the risk of permanently damaging their health and eliminating the possibility of bearing children — bears close scrutiny.
A viral video showing Vassar College’s alumni president referring to a Bill and Melinda Gates foundation as “the Institute of Population Control” has The Associated Press trying to whitewash the slip of the tongue with a “fact” check.
The invited speaker at the event, Laurie Schwab Zabin, a founding director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, later corrected the name, the AP reports. However, that doesn’t mean that Zabin — who died in 2020 — and the foundation weren’t promoting population control.
In fact, the Institute for Population and Reproductive Health is a supporter of the International Conference on Family Planning, the Advance Family Planning advocacy group and the Population Reference Bureau, all of which advocate for population control in some way. Schwab also served on the national board of directors of Planned Parenthood, and helped shape its polices.
In tandem, she worked closely with obstetrician Dr. Alan Guttmacher, who was Planned Parenthood’s president and the American Eugenics Society’s vice president, in establishing the Guttmacher Institute, another agency promoting family planning.
Britain appears to be turning into Italy, and not merely because it is seemingly impossible – or illegal – to stop the Boat People Invasion in either country. We also share the Italian habit of having unstable government.
Italy, of course, was until recently ruled by a technocrat. A manager with no real political convictions beyond the ruling ideology. This is the norm.
Apart from the spasm of direct democracy that was Brexit, British politics has consistently worked to exclude anyone from power with genuine political motivation.
Five years on and there is not much left of Brexit. The lesson to be learned is that even when you don’t lose, you will not be permitted to win. Brexit was a bloody nose to the metropolitan establishment which runs the country against the interests and opinions of the people it governs.
The number one issue amongst people was immigration, and it will certainly still be in the top three. The cost-of-Covid crisis should be number one – were anyone to ask.
If this cost took into account the massive transfer of wealth to the rich from the ordinary, the destruction of our ancient liberties and the compulsion to take injections which have become the leading cause of tragic coincidence, then the next question should be whether Argos does guillotines.
There is no way of knowing how the other real issues which threaten the survival of the nation play with the electorate – because these questions are simply never asked.
Migration, low birth rates, the insane cult of white hatred which demands ‘decolonisation’ (destruction) of everything of value. Does anyone get questioned on their feelings about our vanishing population? Is everyone perfectly happy that in London – and increasingly in other cities – your children will be an ethnic minority in their own schools?
Why should anyone have to worry about their children being given a bawdy sex show by a middle-aged man dressed as a woman? This is a legitimate concern, and not one which features on opinion polls.
Do people really think they should pay far higher fuel bills to subsidise some Net Zero entrepreneur, who had the lucky connections to government to help himself to our money? If they care about the planet, why are the rivers all polluted and the seas full of plastic?
Perhaps we could hope to discuss these issues freely on the major discussion platforms of the day. Simply saying this sounds either sarcastic or hopelessly naive. To engage with people on a digital platform is to be policed by zelotic Liberal extremists, whose job it is to compel you to entertain every opinion but your own.
Most of the time you know where the line is – beyond which you will be banned. This is a bit like the Overton Window, that frame which is used to describe what is politically acceptable to mention at any time.
It is never politically acceptable to mention any issue which might actually improve the lot of the nation and its people. It is slogans, grandiose talk, and the same programme regardless. Why is this?
The centrist settlement – Blairite, neoliberal, consumerist – marches under the rainbow flag and does nothing to preserve family, culture or nation. It promotes aggression abroad and dissolution at home.
The consumer angle is obviously hand in glove with the anti-natalist and sexuality-based lifestyle current, as people who produce no children have more to spend on the trash that stimulates growth.
Ask yourself whether any of these wars have done you any good. The Bush wars, the Blair wars, the one on now and the one to come – how have these wars made anything better for you?
How’s the local school looking? Is it safe to let the kids out? Why does Britain share with Sweden the highest rates of rape in Europe? These questions are never on the polls. No one in politics is going to do anything about them.
In 2006 the Euston manifesto was signed by journalists, academics – Liberals – setting out the neoliberal consensus which is the armature of our political settlement.
It talks about rights a lot, and supports military action to promote democracy and freedom abroad. Elections and consumerism are seen as the pinnacle of human aspiration. There is nothing better than Liberalism, which is why we all have to have it, like it or not. Even if it kills you.
The consumer economy is an addiction economy. Is any politician going to do anything about that? Buying endless trash, being horribly fat, being on what my Nana used to call ‘tablets’ – these are your patriotic duty.
The consumer economy promotes compulsive buying, insatiable appetite, mental illness and the dependence on drugs legal and otherwise. Everything is a condition to be treated with a tablet – this is called ‘medicalising’ behaviour – because tablets are a product on sale. The market, however, is not fixing us.
Would you prefer to live in a nation than in a market? No politician will ask this question, either. That is the kind of question to which we would have to turn to answer the problem of the Brexit vote.
What is the future of Britain – of Northern Ireland – outside of the European Union? It is to ask a serious question about the health of the nation and what that might mean, but we have no serious people to ask it. Instead, late-empire corruption, a scramble for the spoils, and the chaos of extreme individualism in crazy identity politics. Madness is mainstream. Politics is all about the grift.
We have managers, media performers, careerists with contacts in the press. Practically everything these people do is some kind of stunt which gestures to their voter base.
Anti-woke, pro-trans – these issues of the so-called culture war are symptoms of an insanity in our politics where nothing can ever be realistically done to prevent national suicide. The question on the ballot paper is how much tax you will pay to fund it.
We’ve all been bombarded daily with horror stories about how food prices are being forced up and hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest risk starvation because the Russian invasion of Ukraine has prevented exports of grain and sunflower oil.
Well, let me give you some figures our politicians and the mainstream media don’t want to mention. They don’t mention these figures because these figures undermine the disastrous global-warming, climate-catastrophist, Net-Zero policies being forced on us by our rulers.
The U.S. produces abut 384 million metric tonnes of corn each year and around 50 million tonnes of wheat. Ukraine produces about 38 million tonnes of corn each year and around 33 million tonnes of wheat. Around 20 million tonnes of Ukraine’s wheat is exported each year.
Conclusion 1: The U.S. produces an awful lot more food than Ukraine.
But let’s look at how all the USA’s corn and wheat is actually used. Over a third of the USA’s corn – that’s more than 128 million tonnes of the USA’s corn production – is used to make biofuels rather than being used for human consumption.
It’s more difficult to find out how much of the U.S.’s 38 million tonnes of wheat is used for biofuels, but it may be as much as a quarter. However, we do know that in the European Union, 12 million tonnes of grain, including wheat and maize, is turned into ethanol – around 7% of the bloc’s production. It’s estimated that this is enough food to feed around 150 million people if it wasn’t being used for transport fuel.
Also just in the EU, 3.5 million tonnes of palm oil is used to make biodiesel. That’s almost the amount of sunflower oil coming out of Ukraine and Russia combined.
Conclusion 2: We’re burning food rather than using it to feed people.
You may have noticed that last year the petrol you buy changed from something called ‘E5’ to ‘E10’. E5 petrol is petrol containing 5% biofuel and E10 is, of course, petrol containing 10% biofuel.
According to calculations done by scientists at Princeton University, if the U.S. and Europe were to decrease their use of ethanol made from grain by 50% – that would mean just moving back from E10 petrol to E5 petrol – they would effectively have sufficient extra crops to replace all of Ukraine’s exports of grain.
If our rulers were to completely scrap the biofuel mandates they have imposed on us, the world would be awash with food and food prices would fall significantly. Then the only reason for hungry people would be distribution problems caused by mismanagement, corruption and conflict.
When the EU first mandated that 2.5% of all fuel sold in the EU should be made from biofuels, worldwide food prices shot up – wheat, for example, doubled in price – and the UN’s Rapporteur for Food said: “It is a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into soil which produces food stuff that will be burned into biofuel.”
He further argued that biofuels would only lead to further hunger in a world where an estimated 854 million people – one out of six in 2007 – already suffered from the scourge; 100,000 people died from hunger or its immediate consequences every day; and every five seconds, a child died from hunger
We’re now at 10% biofuels and, if I have understood correctly, following new climate change legislation passed in the U.S. last week, the biofuel content of petrol may be increased even further. This will mean diverting more potential food to fuel production at a time of world food shortages and rocketing food prices.
This is madness. But it get worse. Biofuels are less efficient than fossil fuels – you get fewer miles or kilometres per litre or gallon and they damage car engines more than fossil fuels. Moreover, the huge amounts of energy required to produce biofuels mean that they are probably more environmentally-damaging than fossil fuels.
Scrapping the biofuels mandates in the U.S. and EU isn’t something that would take years or months to implement. It could be done this week and the results – more food availability and falling food prices – would happen immediately.
So, why won’t our rulers do this? Moreover, why do they seem to be moving in the opposite direction – by pushing ever more food into fuel production?
It could just be utter incompetence. Or it could be fear of a storm of criticism by the ever more vociferous climate-catastrophist lobby. It could be that they are trapped by their own save-the-planet virtue-signalling. Or it could be the classic reaction of politicians and bureaucracies – the more evidence emerges that their policies are misguided, the more they double down on those policies as they can never admit that they got it wrong.
However, for the conspiracy theorists, there’s a fifth possibility – that our rulers are acting together to deliberately restrict food production, push up food prices and impoverish us all as a means of increasing their control over us.
You can choose which of the five possibilities – incompetence, fear of the climate catastrophists, feeling trapped by their own subservience to the climate-catastrophist cult, doubling down on misguided policies or conspiracy against us – you believe is the most credible explanation of the current food crisis.
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
The European Union is in the throes of an unprecedented energy crisis after taking steps to reduce dependence on Russian oil, natural gas, and coal to “punish” Moscow for its military operation in Ukraine. Skyrocketing energy prices and falling availability have sparked growing concerns about bloc countries’ fate come winter.
European countries are resolving the energy shortfall at home by outbidding developing nations for gas contracts, “increasing the misery of millions of people,” and threatening to plunge entire countries into chaos, Handelsblatt reports.
“While Europe fears supply shortages in winter, the energy crisis has already hit other parts of the world with full force. In Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, power supply is not guaranteed even in hospitals. Young mothers report on how they torment themselves with their newborns during hot summer nights because even fans cannot be switched on,” Handelsblatt contributor Mathias Peer wrote.
A similar situation is seen in Pakistan, which has experienced “one power blackout after another,” and “also as a consequence of Europe’s failed energy policy,” Peer indicated.
The observer explained that the EU’s headlong rush to reduce dependence on Russian gas has triggered “massive turbulence on global energy markets,” with fleets of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers which ordinarily carry cargoes to Asia diverted to Europe instead.
“In the bidding competition for deliveries, states like Bangladesh, whose per capita income is 95 percent below that of Germany, have what has become a hopeless mission,” losing out on contracts, resulting in the paralysis of gas-fueled power plants “and massive problems for hundreds of millions of people in the affected countries,” Peer noted.
The Handelsblatt contributor suggested that it was “all too understandable” for the EU to try to reduce its dependence on Russian energy in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, and suggested that Europe is not to blame for the energy crisis.
“But Europe’s attempt to find alternatives must not be at the expense of uninvolved third countries. It is the EU’s responsibility to ensure that by solving its supply shortages, not further aggravate the crisis in other countries. Reducing consumption must therefore take priority over diverting resources from other parts of the world, and in this regard the European gas contingency plan is far from being ambitious enough,” the observer suggested.
Peer emphasized that a more “considerate approach” is needed to stop Brussels from continuing to “play into [Vladimir] Putin’s hands.”
“His propaganda – which states that it is not Russia but the West and its sanctions that are responsible for the current crisis – is already affecting many more people in emerging countries than Europe would like,” the columnist concluded.
The crisis in Ukraine as well as US and EU moves to curb Russian energy and food exports to the West and other countries have served to exacerbate the inflation, energy price crunch, and global hunger crises which have accumulated over the past two years after the breakdown of the world economy thanks to COVID. President Vladimir Putin has characterized Brussels’ push to wean itself off Russian energy as “suicidal,” and warned that higher energy costs would collapse the bloc’s economic competitiveness.
The energy crisis has prompted European countries to begin a search for new sources of energy in Africa, including Algeria, Nigeria, and Tanzania. However, even before the escalation of the Ukraine crisis, some African leaders have resisted the new European energy “scramble for Africa,” with Algeria shutting off the taps to Spain over Madrid’s support for Morocco in the dispute over Western Sahara, and Nigerian Environment Minister Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar accusing developed nations of spending years starving Africa’s natural gas projects of funds on the grounds that they contribute to climate change.
A shipping expert gives his views on the latest climate regulations for international shipping:
A new report found that more than 75% of ships will not meet the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) new Environmental social and corporate governance (ESG) index aimed at decarbonizing the industry. This means that many ship owners will be forced to slow ships down to reduce emissions but doing so could deepen the global food and energy crisis by reducing available ship capacity.
“IMO decarbonization targets will cause ships to slow down delaying food shipments and people will starve,” a global security analyst told gCaptain. “How many people will die as a result of the IMO’s ESG efforts is unknown at this time. I don’t think most shipowners even understand the severity of the EEXI threat but it could be millions of lives.”
IMO EEXI ESG INDEX
“Prior to any efficiency modifications, more than 75% of the fleet — including bulkers, tankers, and containerships — will not be compliant with the Energy Efficiency Existing Index (EEXI) that will enter into force next year,” said cargo analyst Joey Daly, in the new VesselsValue report.
The challenge of decarbonization will extend to all areas of shipping, and EEXI alone will present a myriad of challenges to owners, operators and financiers. Simon Hodgkinson, who heads loss prevention at West P&I, has suggested that the new rule could be one of the most significant new shipping regulations in years. He believes it has the potential to shift the entire industry.
The International Maritime Organization’s Energy Efficiency Existing Index is a voluntary, incentive-based system that encourages ships to improve their energy efficiency. The Index uses a vessel’s speed, cargo-carrying capacity, and other factors to calculate a numerical score. The higher the score, the more energy efficient the vessel. More specifically EEXI (Energy Efficiency Existing Ships Index) is a measure of a ship’s CO2 emissions per transport work. It is similar to the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI), which has been in force since 2013, but applies to existing ships rather than new ones.
The Index is designed to motivate shipowners and operators to invest in energy efficiency measures that will reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Ships have to attain EEXI approval once in a lifetime, by the first periodical survey in 2023 at the latest.
Slow Steaming
Ship owners can meet the target by building new eco-friendly ships, investing in new decarbonization technology, and upgrading existing ships to burn cleaner fuels like LNG, or by slow steaming.
Slow steaming is a technique used by shippers to reduce fuel consumption and emissions by slowing down vessels. The process involves sailing at a slower speed, typically around 50% of the vessel’s maximum speed. This can be done by reducing the revolutions per minute (RPM) of the propellers.
While older ships can be retrofitted with devices to lower emissions and meet EEXI requirements, analysts say the fix most ship owners will take is just to go slower, with a 10% drop in cruising speeds slashing fuel usage by almost 30%, according to marine sector lender Danish Ship Finance.
“They’re basically being told to either improve the ship or slow down,” said Jan Dieleman, president of Cargill Ocean Transportation, the freight division of commodities trading house Cargill, which leases more than 600 vessels to ferry mainly food and energy products around the world.
As I understand it, the new regulations are voluntary, so will likely be ignored by many countries. However, shipping lines ignoring the diktat may find themselves punished by banks and insurers, operating to strict ESG rules:
“As the IMO prepares to rate the energy efficiency of ships on a EEXI scale of A to E, shipping companies will come under increasing pressure to meet these targets not just from regulators but also from banks.
In 2019, a group of banks committed to efforts to cut carbon emissions when lending to shipping companies. This group of banks established the Poseidon Principles, a global framework that is consistent with IMO policies on environmental grounds. As of today, 28 banks have signed on to the Poseidon Principles.
The Poseidon Principles are fairly new but are already having a ripple effect on finance and insurance, as banks and other lenders begin to factor in a company’s carbon emissions when making lending decisions.
What this means for shipowners is that even if they find a way around the IMO’s ESG regulations, steaming at normal speeds could increase their carbon scores and have a negative effect on financing options and stock prices”
This demented obsession with decarbonisation brings a painful dilemma:
Slow steaming means in effect less global shipping capacity, leading to a potential bottleneck on supplies. As the article explains:
“Is a reduction of capacity really a troubling problem? Yes.
Nobody is calculating the price of a good ESG score in terms of human lives,” said one global security analyst who wished to stay anonymous. “The question is no longer if people will starve to death because of IMO decarbonization targets. The question is how many?”
The most troubling fact from our conversations with global security analysts was that millions could die before famine even sets in.“
And longer shipping times mean higher journey costs, despite the savings on fuel, adding to the cost of everything we import.
The alternative, of course, is to simply build more ships to bring shipping capacity back into equilibrium. The building of these ships will, of course, carry an enormous carbon footprint of its own, eliminating any potential savings from fuel efficiency for many years to come.
And China?
Any discussion about international shipping must take into account the role of China, who are believed to control the world’s second-largest shipping fleet by gross tons and constructed over a third of the world’s vessels in 2019.
Will they follow these rules?
One of the reasons for their global dominance of shipping lies in a complicated and opaque system of formal and informal state support that is unrivalled in size and scope, and which includes subsidised finance from state banks, who are unlikely to be concerned with ESG.
While China may pay lip service to these new regulations, given their total disregard for ESG in other industries, I would strongly suspect that they will just carry on building up their shipping industry, taking advantage of the West’s weakness.
And the West’s economic dependence on China will grow ever more dangerous.
LATELY I have been listening to interviews with Mattias Desmet, the Belgian psychologist who has popularised, if not invented, the term ‘mass formation’, a sort of mass hypnosis, a condition which he says often leads to tyranny. If I understand him correctly mass formation occurs when people feel estranged from each other and the world around them, they lack purpose and feel out of control. Fear is an important factor in this and frightened people are amongst the easiest to hypnotise since they will unquestionably follow an ‘authoritative’ voice. The door is open for someone to come along and offer them a place to belong, make them feel safe and give them a purpose. Thus the tyrant is born. Desmet contends that although this has happened throughout history it has become more common in modern times because we have become increasingly estranged from nature, and he attributes this to the invention of the clock.
As soon as reliable clocks were available, people in their everyday lives were less influenced by the sun and the seasons. Reliable clocks are a symbol of industrialisation, and this has led to movement of people into cities and consequently less in touch with nature. The mechanisation of agriculture gave us the ability to feed large numbers using very little labour. Cheap energy from oil and coal accelerated this industrialisation. Cities and towns have benefits: it’s easier to provide services including education and health, clean water, power and transport, and as someone who lives in a rural area I am well aware of the difference. This has happened in a very short space of time to a species which has evolved over millennia as part of the natural world. In truth we are as much a part of nature as trees, earthworms, bacteria and viruses (although it’s debatable whether or not the current coronavirus is natural).
There’s a wonderful grounding reality about the natural world. Gravity is all too real if you fall out of a window, and rain, wind and sunshine can make you feel wonderful or damage your health. Childbirth is both joyous and potentially fatal. Relationships can be enriching or toxic.
All this may sound obvious, but doesn’t seem to be for many of our fellow citizens who think that bad things shouldn’t and wouldn’t happen if the State took proper care of us which, of course, it promises to do: that voice of authority again.
This detachment from the real leads to living too much in the head. Your ideas, arguments, your emotions become the greater part of your reality. The constantly chattering voice in your brain becomes louder unless you can ground yourself. This is the default position for many and it can be dangerous. The signs are everywhere.
Climate change is one such situation. As we know all too well, this is the idea that a small increase in the atmosphere of a trace gas which is essential to life is responsible for rising global temperatures, storms, mass extinctions, diseases, and I could go on but you’ve heard it all before. Some say that this is proven to be true and the science is settled and isn’t science a really good way of connecting with the real world? Yes, when it isn’t manipulated for political purposes or carried out by people who think that computer models are the real world.
Talking of modelling takes us to Covid. Policy to deal with the virus was largely driven by models which chimed with certain political aims and gave rise to disastrous consequences. For many years the UK had a pandemic policy based on accumulated data and real-world results of public health interventions, yet this policy was thrown out and its proponents, people at the top of their field, were ignored, smeared or insulted and often all three. Vilification of ‘outsiders’ is another aspect of mass formation. The fact of natural immunity was debunked by people who could not admit to the existence of this wonderful example of the interrelationship between us and the rest of nature.
Now we come to woke, perhaps the most glaring example of living in your head instead of the real world. The hallmark of this is a belief in something that defies logic, history and science (the real thing, not the made-up stuff). No amount of education or reasoning permeates the world that is firmly embedded in the head. The transgender issue is an astonishing example. It wouldn’t be so bad if these ideas stayed inside the head but they escape into the real world where they can have serious consequences: men in female prisons and hospital wards, and male athletes competing in women’s sports events for example. I have heard of midwives saying that a man can have a cervix. I suppose the beings in your head can have any anatomy you want. I’m just waiting for the day when gravity is seen as a Western construct and people start walking off cliffs.
When challenged, those who live in their heads can react aggressively because you have challenged their very being. Perhaps the most frightening consequence of this detachment from reality and its subsequent mass formation is illustrated by the thoughts of Dr Yuval Noah Harari, adviser to everyone’s favourite human being, globalist Klaus Schwab. Harari believes that ‘science is replacing evolution by natural selection with evolution by intelligent design’. Not sure how the word ‘intelligent’ belongs in that sentence, but he seems to show a complete lack of understanding of the real world and the way everything in it is connected. Harari suggests that it will be possible to tweak human DNA in the way that we can alter computer coding. Very few processes in the body are controlled by one gene; physiological activity results from the interaction of many genes which may be on different chromosomes. Tinkering with a few genes is likely to have unforeseen consequences. Our DNA is intimately connected to the outside world. We express genes in response to outside stimuli, viruses incorporate themselves into our DNA and our body’s immune history is written in our genes. In short, our DNA is finely tuned to nature and to suggest that manipulating the various molecules in its strands will improve our lot is hubris beyond belief. Perhaps in Harari’s head we are all machines. Maybe he finds that comforting.
We are now facing a regime that is losing, is aware that it is losing, and wants at all costs to survive even if it means damning everyone else. That is the picture that we get, in bold strokes. In practice, there may be considerable divisions and emergent factionalism within the pandemicist regime. By pandemicism I mean the intersection of catastrophism and authoritarianism. This article is written from within the Canadian and sometimes the Quebec contexts.
Three Factions: Fugitives, Perpetual Promoters, and Vandals
Fugitives: Typically led by provincial government leaders, some local politicians, the federal Conservative Party, and a small number of doctors, academics, and journalists who have broken away. At the provincial level these are politicians who have lifted all mandates and restrictions, even as the federal Liberals wanted them to be permanent, and augmented (national compulsory “vaccination,” for example). They have resisted reimposing any of the previous measures—yet they also state that what they have done is merely to “suspend” such measures.
An unflattering description, by those who have suffered their harms, would go like this: this faction consists of those who, like unwilling accomplices fleeing the scene of a crime, seek refuge in a web of alibis, disclaimers, disavowals, and caveats.
They may wish to recant, but do not want to admit guilt publicly—instead, they revoke, recall, and “relax the public health measures”. This faction seeks to avoid further damage to the economy, society, and health and welfare of citizens, by cutting losses and trying to withdraw under the pretext that success has either been achieved, or the costs are too high to continue. At least there is recognition in this group that the imposed restrictions did far more harm than good (as they should have known, since not even the WHO recommended such policies, and pre-existing preparedness plans in Canada were simply discarded—see Dr. Schabas here). This faction realizes that its members have served as an instrument for causing massive damage—politically, economically, and socially—and at most can only indirectly admit to that fact by now pursuing a different course. The fugitive faction would like to see us exit this trauma without any hard feelings, with little if any accountability, cheered by the promise that “we won’t do it again”. They would prefer to declare that “it is all subsiding” as we “learn to live with the virus”.
The existence of a faction of fugitives may also explain why suddenly there is more room in some media outlets for views that, until moments ago, were banished and censored as “misinformation” and “fake news”. We see such examples appearing in Newsweek(onmultipleoccasions), the Wall Street Journal(also here), the Toronto Sun (numeroustimesinfact—also here) and even the Globe & Mail(more than once), among others. While in Canada regime media speak of “anti-mandate” figures as if they were a rogue species of criminals, even a hard-line publication like The Economist can paint a grim picture of the harms of lockdowns for children. That these media publish the views of members of this faction is just a reaffirmation of the simple fact that it is easier for former insiders to be heard, than it is for outsiders who were never let in to begin with.
Fugitives, having developed doubts, misgivings, or even regrets, are joined by a large portion of the population that simply does not want to hear anything ever again about Covid, lockdowns, “masks,” “the pandemic,” and so on. Typically, these are people who have had two doses of the non-vaccines, and will not have a third—and will also resist having their children injected (more on this later).
In the Canadian context, in terms of size and influence, this is the largest of the factions. Its size and influence has grown particularly as 2022 has progressed. At the leadership level particularly, this faction contains those who have drifted away from the other two factions. Elements of this faction existed very early in 2020, before folding themselves into the pandemicist lockdown regime. Early expressions of doubt from political leaders, messages that contradicted the lockdown dogma that was imposed at lightning speed, and reopening policies that alarmed the media, were some of the indications of the existence of this prospective faction. A large percentage of the population that was coerced into getting “jabbed” forms the popular base of this faction. Otherwise, it is quite distinct from the resistance that has been fighting “vaccine” mandates, lockdowns, and other restrictions from the start—and who do not constitute a splinter of a regime to which they never belonged.
Internationally, the already existing global mass movement against mandates and restrictions is being joined by other disaffected quarters that have been harshly affected by economic transformation, ushered in by the same lockdown regimes, in what appears to be a rising global rebellion.
Perpetual Promoters: Unperturbed enthusiasts of eternal lockdowns, this middling class of stay-at-home professionals cherishes the pandemic as a lifestyle choice. This faction seeks straightforward continuity—maintain or reintroduce “measures,” encourage further “vaccination,” maintain or bring back “masking,” and so on. A Zoom-based social segment, this preachy faction consists of regime media and regime academia, whose specialties as advocates is to manipulate symbols and re-engineer values in order to normalize the state of exception. These exponents of the emergency lifestyle strive to maintain a permanent pandemic by sustaining a high level of propaganda and fear-mongering. They are constantly on alert. They are champions of “vigilance”. Behaving like overzealous hall monitors and pompous snitches, they are pious apostles of authoritarianism. In terms of its reality-denial capacity, it is the most psychotic of the factions—that is not an insult, but more of a clinical diagnosis.
This faction now invites ridicule from former believers (citizens qua parishioners), because this faction’s members fail to recognize the depth of indifference or anger that has sprouted in the society, especially post-Omicron, with the evident failure of the non-vaccines and the resulting rupture of the contract that believers were promised. Members of this faction also seem entirely numb to the consequences of their choices.
Unbridled enthusiasts of every wrong decision and the worst of choices, they continue cheerleading even when the game is over. They are idealists, true believers, who will cheerfully offer one booster after another until immune systems completely collapse, just in time for the complete collapse of the social system. This faction can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from the following, far more sinister cluster of interests, because to a significant extent it is, in functional terms, the “useful idiot” of what follows.
Initially extremely influential, and well remunerated from the Canadian federal government, this faction has seen its influence decline dramatically, especially in 2022.
Vandals: The third faction, that of the progressivist wreckers proclaiming a new order, is the one that is most worrying. This faction, consisting of champions of demolition, is the one that is capable of considering one final all-out assault that is so massive that it can only end in total destruction and provoke generalized violence in the form of civil unrest. This is the faction that seeks to crash the economy, by aggravating inflation, maximizing fuel shortages, damaging agricultural production, all under the pretext of “greening” the economy and ushering in a “transition” to “renewables” while fighting to preserve the phony “liberal world order” against the Russian bogeyman. Failed tools, like “vaccines” and sanctions, have been their favourites thus far, but they are capable of worse forms of collective punishment against recalcitrants. This third faction actively aims to escalate tensions and create further divisions in the society. This faction desires censorship to be institutionalized, legalized, and normalized. It wants pure dictatorship (in the name of “saving our democracy,” that is, the democracy that allows space only for them alone). The model some admire is China’s dictatorship, because that totalitarian system has served their interests very well. Key actors in this faction include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, Big Pharma, the World Health Organization, numerous Harvard graduates, NATO, the European Commission, the Atlantic Council, and so on. The third faction is also the one serviced by political functionaries such as Justin Trudeau, Mark Rutte, Emanuel Macron, and Joe Biden. Members of this faction may call themselves “liberals,” but they are in fact ex-liberals, illiberals, or post-liberals. They detest individual freedoms, civil liberties, and human rights. They embrace “social justice” only when it is cost-free, benefits (microscopic) minorities, and helps to create social divisions. (Note: according to the most recent census, Canada’s “trans” and “non-binary” population amounts to a whopping 0.003% of the total population—and even that is more than twice as large as the number of officially proclaimed “Covid deaths”.) They want a New World Order ruled by absolutist technocrats, unaccountable and non-elected “experts,” and they are willing to tempt the apocalypse to get to their destination.
If the experts, elites, and functionaries in power, who belong to this third faction, come to the realization that they cannot rule any longer, then they are going to make sure that there is nothing left to rule, or nothing left that is worth ruling. They are that suicidal and nihilistic. Bringing forth the full violence that is latent in progressivist ideology, they will opt for a scorched earth policy if they are not defeated first.
This third faction is the one that is least popular in the society, but it retains most of the levers of power—in particular, a monopoly over the means of violence, a tight grip on the country’s finances, and almost total sway over the courts and the media. It is by far the most dangerous faction and is located at the top of the regime’s pyramid of power.
The main difference between the second and third factions is that the latter is far more extreme, while the former is in denial about the extremism of the latter. The second faction is largely dependent on the third, but not vice versa.
What is common about all three factions is that they are dominated by actors who are neither willing nor capable of admitting mistakes. This is a problem, especially because they have been wrong on just about every major issue and significant problem for the past two decades, who can boast only of an uninterrupted litany of failures. In “The Insufferable Arrogance of the Constantly Wrong,” Clayton Fox listed just some of these epic failures of reason, analysis, or basic credibility among these discredited and defeated “experts” and technocrats.
What is to be hoped is that the first faction will break off completely, and form something like a mass movement comprising a cross-section of all classes, occupations, and regions of the country. Within the current regime of interlocking interests and partnerships between governments, the media, universities, the courts, the police and armed forces, and private corporations and foundations, the first faction is the one creating the most friction where the advancement of the plans of the other two are concerned. One hopes that friction will evolve into open resistance.
Outside of this arrangement of factions are those that resisted, criticized, and protested the lockdowns, “masking,” mandates, and the “vaccines” themselves. In Canada they numbered about 10% of the adult population (far less than many nations in Europe, and most in Africa and the Caribbean). However, their influence is growing. Much like the power structure they oppose, they consist of a complete cross-section of the national society: members of all ethnic groups and classes; representatives of every professional occupation; residents in every part of Canada; the complete range of educational achievement; supporters of every political party and ideology; and even politicians at all levels of government. Totally non-existent within the outsider group, however, is the presence of Big Banks, Big Tech, or Big Pharma.
The Stakes: Capital and Power
Much is at stake for the regime, beyond its reputation. The political economy of pandemicism is at stake—the ability to extract capital from the people, and accumulate it in the pockets of the super-rich and their corporations. “Vaccine uptake,” even after the repeated, demonstrated failures of the non-vaccines to achieve even the most minimal of the promised goals (while evidence of damage accumulates), remains a key goal. “Vaccine uptake” is about sustaining demand, that is, of sustaining the profit margins for commercial pharmaceutical interests. The maintenance of fear is thus essential to sustaining demand. In addition to extracting capital, there is the very basic question of power: the unrestrained ability to dominate the masses, without question, triumphing against resistance. The “vaccine” gravy train coming to its last stop threatens all of this, as do a number of other challenges: Ukraine, inflation, and the recession, and the immense unpopularity of those in power.
Like the “war on drugs,” then the “war on terror,” this horrific “war on the virus” (which is in fact a war on the people) is one more grand failure (except, perhaps, as an intentional crime). A regime can withstand only so many monumental failures, or commit so many crimes, before it can stand no more.
Regarding sustaining demand, there is now a gradation of forms of “vaccine resistance,” as reported in data from Public Health Canada:
15% of the population has had no dose;
The 82% of the population that took two doses, dropped to 49% of who took a third—even as the federal government declared those with two doses “not up to date” and removed the term “fully vaccinated” (following Fauci);
Less than 10% have had a fourth dose;
56% of children (5 to 11 years of age) have had one dose, which drops to 42% having the “primary series” (two doses).
As things stand now in Canada, 64% of the population is defined as “not up to date,” that is, not in compliance. In the US there is growing public criticism about the rush to “vaccinate” toddlers, including from esteemed persons who previously formed part of the mainstream second faction, the promoters, such as Dr. Paul Offit.
To an extent, the growing extremism of the second and third factions is apparently impelling the formation of the first faction listed at the outset, driving away even some stalwarts.
In an ongoing effort to “study up,” which includes reading and analyzing the scripts produced by regime media, what follows is just about a week’s worth of snapshots that illustrate some of the main points above. Before proceeding, I want to explore the “regime media” concept a little further.
Regime Media, Part 2
Regime media are a fusion of a police force and a public relations firm. Whether they are privately owned, yet receive government payouts, or they are publicly owned and prey to corporate advertisers, in Canada all of the media of domination (CBC, CTV, Global News, The Toronto Star, The Globe & Mail, etc.) are aligned with and actively support the pandemicist regime and indulge its elitist virtue signalling about select, preferred minorities that are elevated for special recognition and rewards. Gesticulating toward celebrity-approved “social justice” issues, and fanning all of the latest moral panics that occupy the minds of the dependent urban middle class, regime media have thus been able to dull suspicions from the left. The self-identified left has largely fallen in line with regime media and extend the regime’s core messages through various “alternative” media—which are no alternatives at all (they are simply less resourced). It is not surprising then to find some of the most extreme advocacy for Zero Covid policies emanating from the left, much of which is also pro-China, the industrial engine of contemporary globalization and the first country to set the pattern for the lockdowns that followed around the world.
Regime media may call themselves “news media,” but there is next to no actual journalism involved in their work. In that spirit, students at contemporary Canadian schools of “journalism” are in fact being trained in the methods of policing restive subjects with “unacceptable views”. Embracing “advocacy,” they have degenerated into mere practitioners of propaganda whose ultimate aim is the reproduction of the ideas of the ruling faction of the regime.
Here they are followed by professors and students in a variety of disciplines which these days are busy churning out one predictable thesis after another that essentially involves policing : using the Internet to engage in surveillance of troublesome “fringe minorities” with “extremist views” that threaten to “incite hatred”—and they do this without any sense of irony. Their work is one-dimensional, simplistic, conspiratorial, and their “data” is cherry-picked. Rather than full and richly textured biographies, they produce caricatures dressed up in the theoretical jargon that is currently in fashion in their disciplines. Master compilers of shitlists, they squat for long days in social media on the lookout for anyone deviating from their preferred narrative, so they can then pounce and declare deviants to be violent extremists. Nobody is permitted to be “wrong” on the Internet. The aim of the students and professors is to make these “minorities” legible to the authorities, while reaffirming their own sense of superiority as specially endowed super-citizens with a natural right to manage inferior others, “for their own good”. Regime academia, like regime media, consists of a non-elected political class mesmerized by its belief in its own inherent goodness, and its right to rule. The writing of this class reads more like pseudo-legislation than scholarly analysis, and their “theories” are little more than ideological wishful thinking mixed in with complaints. They see the world as a collection of “problems” that require their management. An inanely partisan document produced by the UNESCO research chair in Quebec exemplifies many of these traits—see “Le mouvement conspirationniste au québec : leaders, discours et adhésion” (“The Conspiracy Movement in Quebec: Leaders, Discourse and Membership”). The art of these “scholars” consists of punching down while sucking up.
Regime media’s main functions are: surveillance, censorship, and prosecution. Stories are written with a tensely vigilant, accusatory tone, meant to put readers on guard, or on notice. Critical-minded questions, if they are even mentioned, are instantly dismissed out of hand or simply associated with mental illness or amorphous “extremism”. They do not try to keep their “finger on the pulse” of society—they instead aim to determine the pulse rate itself.
Regime media’s public scripts involve a regression to some of the most outmoded forms of propaganda seen since World War I. Their work involves a classically crude command structure: they tell people what to think, plain and simple. Then they tell people what to think about, and here the agenda-setting is particularly exclusive. One will never read stories of the “vaccine injured,” or see or hear interviews with anti-mandate protesters, dissident doctors, and so forth. Theirs is a regimist record, cleansed of all opposition and inconvenient facts. It reads almost like a colonial archive, only with greater gaps and silences.
What the regime media tell people to think is hatred, especially hatred for the non-compliant Other. Inciting hatred against marginalized categories of Canadians over the past two plus years has already been abundantly documented—this is not a theoretical statement, it is now merely an observation.
What the regime media tell people to think about is emergency and safety. Also well documented, any perusal of the pages of the print and Web regime media will quickly confirm this.
Inversion and projection are key tools of regime media: their work consists of broadcasting disinformation, propaganda, conspiracy theories, false allegations, hyperbole, fear-mongering and character assassination, while producing “news stories” that are entirely and exclusively one-sided and indistinguishable from straightforward editorials.
In 2022, such regime media turned their attention to explicitly attacking freedom. Openly praising sheep, an article in the Globe & Mail advocated that humanity follow the example of sheep. In the same paper, another article cautioned that freedom “is not absolute,” and it does not mean we have the right to do anything we want—in other words, the author fully tilted against a complete straw man (absolutely none of the anti-mandate protesters ever advocated any such thing… they just wanted their jobs back). The CBC laboured to turn “freedom” into a dirty word that it conflated with the politics of “far-right” extremism. Canadians though they may be, they publicly worry about flying the Canadian flag, because it has been sullied by those fighting for freedom. Perennially perturbed by “nationalism,” they have no such qualms when painting their social media profiles with the Ukrainian flag, or claiming to support First Nations.
Perpetual Promoters: “Do Not Allow the People to Rest Even for a Moment”
Here I will continue my commentary on the work of the second faction, and simply illustrate it with snapshots taken over the course of a week (if that much). The significance of the week in question is that it featured the proclamation of a “seventh wave” in Quebec. This time—given the degree of popular contempt for restrictions that are proven failures, and mindful of a provincial election in October—the government of Quebec is acting like a member of the Fugitive faction. Members of the Perpetual Promoters’ faction are turning on the government, trying to school it back into authoritarian “measures”.
As an anthropologist, I have been trained to view the narratives of authorities with considerable skepticism, knowing that such narratives tend to push for a desired reality more than they accurately describe an actually existing reality, and that such narratives reflect the vested interests of powerful actors. Reality in the papers and reality on the ground are thus often very different. As an anthropologist with ethnographic experience, I tend to privilege reality on the ground—and on the ground, there is no “seventh wave”. People are carrying on as normal, meaning a pre-2020 normal. They seem to be enjoying their summer as best as they can, at least in the rural region where I live: swimming in lakes; boating; barbecuing; setting off fireworks every weekend; gathering with friends around backyard fires; neighbourhoods alive with the sounds of children playing; shopping and dining occurring without “masks” or any apparent concern for “social distancing,” and so on. Nobody is panicking. The Perpetual Promoters just hate that.
One example of a common injunction against any relaxation from anxiety, is an article like this one from the Montreal Gazette: “It’s too soon for Montrealers to bet on a COVID-free summer: experts”. No summer for the masses—the “experts” have sealed this: “Few masks, plentiful travel and a highly contagious sub-variant mean we need to remain cautious”. The fear-mongering was thus also intended to boost the social capital of “experts” while draining the people of any sense of hope: “As COVID-19 case counts fall and hospitalizations slowly drop, Quebecers are wondering if they’ll be able to enjoy another relatively COVID-free summer this year. The short answer is probably not…”. The experts warn, and lament: “only 52 per cent of Quebecers have gotten a third vaccination, leaving half the population vulnerable as the immunity from their vaccinations or infections wane”. They added: “And for sure get your third dose. This is not a virus that anyone wants to get”. The stress is on an imputed “vulnerability” which then becomes a sales pitch for Big Pharma’s experimental gene therapies which have done nothing to prevent spread. The experts also imagine a severe virus, one that nobody wants to get, but everyone got anyway (and without a massive die off). Be cautious, feel vulnerable—even knowing all of the damage done by sustained fear and anxiety for people’s mental health, in a desperate bid to remain relevant the perpetual promoters throw any real care for public health to the wind.
They are immune—so now it is time to scare them to death. This time courtesy of Global News, we have another lesson in how sophistry works. To be clear, absolutely nothing in the article proves that those infected by Omicron will likely get sick from a subsequent infection with an Omicron variant. The purpose of the article is simply to make people feel insecure, and then rush for the nearest shot of precious mRNA. The way the author of the article tries to smuggle through the fear messaging, is first by lumping together both those who were mRNA injected and got Covid, and those who kept their systems clear of the experimental gene therapies to begin with (with no increased incidence of myocarditis or pericarditis, which is not the case for the injected). By conflating the two groups, the author does not need to talk about immuneimprinting, and the fact that those with three doses now have significantly negative immunity. Across Canada, in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, government data show that those with three doses or more account for the majority of hospitalizations and deaths, despite numbering no more than 50% of the population. However, it is standard fare for regime media to generalize all risks, which justify one-size-fits-all (i.e., totalitarian) “solutions”.
What Global News does is to take the analogy of the glass half full to an extreme: “… one in every eight people who contract the virus do not develop antibodies in their blood from their illness”. “So forget going to some kind of ‘COVID party,’” said Dr. Catherine Hankins, a professor at McGill University in the Faculty of Medicine and co-chair of Canada’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force: “Infection is not a viable strategy to achieve or maintain immunity”. Why forget the Covid party? Did the article not just state that 7/8 people develop immunity? Therefore, if we take their data at face value—with zero scrutiny or debate—that means that 87.5% of persons have immunity. That sounds like a pretty viable strategy. At this point one might only hear the din of preparations resuming for Covid parties (not that it would even be necessary to have these anymore).
The article also quietly conflates infection with actual sickness. So you might test positive again for Covid (assuming you even care to be tested). And so what? The Perpetual Promoters continue to instill shame in infection, as if infection were proof of some sin. Colleagues and students of mine have “admitted” to getting Covid: “I know!” one exclaimed apologetically.
Prof. Hankins, the party pooper at McGill, also added: “We do have one in eight people that don’t show any antibodies in their blood, so they’re not responding to the vaccine. And if they get infected, we’re not seeing evidence of it… So we don’t quite know what’s going on”. Indeed.
Later in the same articleGlobal News’ “experts” admit that one reason why there are lower levels of antibodies among the Omicron-infected, is because “it’s a milder infection”. However, as if forgetting themselves and losing the train of their own thought, moments later they repeat the mantra: “there is strong scientific evidence showing the vaccine does prevent severe illness and death”. But if Omicron itself does not cause severe illness and death—which they admitted—then how do they credit the non-vaccines with saving people?
The real purpose of the article is clearly revealed at the end. It uses fear as a sales pitch: “I think it’s important that people understand that if you’ve had it before, you are still a sitting duck… you don’t have the immunity that you had closer to when you got your vaccine… So it’s really important to get that booster”.
Yet another editorial appeared in The Montreal Gazette moaning about breathing barriers not being forced onto everyone’s faces, immediately. It has been only a couple of weeks since “mask” mandates have been lifted in Quebec, for all settings except medical ones. We are only half way through the summer, but regime media cannot wait until the fall—restrictions need to come right back now. Remember: no summer for you, the party is over. This is the second such editorial in a week. The editorial board is complaining that Quebec’s plans looks like “everyone for themselves”—and while they speak of “everyone,” what they are really doing is using “the immunocompromised” as rhetorical and political shields. Adept as hostage-takers (humanitarian abduction), regime media will hold any minority they can find at ransom, until everyone else is forced to bend.
To further add to a record of deception, deflection, and sophistry, the editorial board argues: “It is hard to imagine that the dropping of just about all masking requirements has not also contributed to the upswing in cases. Relatively few people seem to be wearing masks these days”. There is not even a pretense of “science” anymore; now it is just a matter of “imagining”. For some reason they are unable to recollect, even a few short weeks later, that 50% of Canadians got Omicron over the past few months, when we were still at the height of mandates and restrictions. “Masks” did nothing to “protect” people. Indeed, virtually nobody needed “protection”. Most visitors to the Gazette’s website now know that.
But the Montreal Gazette, with its increasing desperation on display, is starting to play its hand too visibly. From “science” we have gone to “imagination”. From “protecting health,” we have gone to the Gazette’s real target: that “segment of the population being courted by the Quebec Conservative Party, whose star seems to be rising”. Here they allude to Eric Duhaime, the popular leader of the Quebec Conservative Party, only you would not know how popular he has become thanks to the blackout in Anglophone Quebec media. His weekly meetings and call-in programs with tens of thousands of Quebecers during “the pandemic,” have helped to build a powerful grassroots anti-mandate, anti-emergency movement that, in Quebec, likely helped to shape the first faction mentioned at the outset of this article.
Regime academia, promoted by regime media. Regime academia is keen to gin up fear of the “seventh wave,” but is clearly anxious about not being able to exploit it. McGill’s Donald Vinh “says the province should reimplement public health measures. And refusing to do so because it may seem like taking a step backward after removing them, he added, is a ‘failing mentality that could get us in trouble’”. Dr. Nathalie Grandvaux outright proclaims a permanent pandemic, and urges everyone to follow her hysterical signalling: “The virus is constantly here, she said, and there’s no reason to believe the province will somehow be shielded from future variants, either”. “Speaking about waves is a bit like telling people there’s nothing to be concerned about between them,” Grandvaux said. “But that’s not the case — the virus is always there”.
“I think at this point, we all have to make it part of our life. I think we have to start moving on and moving forward, because the number of small businesses that closed and didn’t get to reopen, it can’t happen again because too many people will suffer.”
“I think that the media likes to play on people’s fears and make it worse. We just have to deal with it.”
“I think we should be talking more about what it means to live with a virus period, rather than this virus, because there are going to be many viruses and it’s going to happen again. I think the world is a little more prepared for a heavy-duty virus. I’m not particularly worried about it.”
“Maybe we should stop talking about waves and start talking about a new normal.”
“I think the customers feel super safe here. Those who don’t feel comfortable just don’t come. It feels like normal times again.”
“I think it’s just another virus we will have to live with, like the flu.”
As minimal and polite as such remarks are, they are the surface evidence that people have turned against the narrative of the failed elites and the discredited expert class. They have joined all the other fugitives. Pandemicism eventually has to meet resistance, and it can and will be defeated. And not even a reich proclaimed for a thousand years lasted more than 12. Tick-tock.
By James Petras | Global Research | September 12, 2018
Introduction
Despite having the biggest military budget in the world, five times larger than the next six countries, the largest number of military bases – over 180 – in the world and the most expensive military industrial complex, the US has failed to win a single war in the 21st century.
In this paper we will enumerate the wars and proceed to analyze why, despite the powerful material basis for wars, it has led to failures. … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News
Aletho News 