TIME after time, we hear the following lament from lockdown sceptics: ‘I’ve looked into data on Covid and the lockdown and it’s clear that government measures have been wildly disproportionate, but my relatives refuse to look at the data or listen to reasonable argument. Why?’
The answer seems to be partly temperament, partly historical.
The state and its proxies
As Gawain Towler reported in TCW yesterday, researchers discovered that lockdown sceptics are more likely to assess data critically, want to examine sources and are resistant to mass-media narratives. (Incidentally, the report writers considered these traits to be bad.) This tells us that the less inquisitive tend to accept arguments from authority with fewer (or no) doubts. Since 1945, with the comforting (or suffocating) mantra ‘from cradle to grave’, the British people have been lulled into complacency. They expected the state to educate, police, care for them, treat their health, pension them and bury them. Over decades, responding to the British state with such trust has been deleterious to the nation (as distinct from the state) by loosening bonds within nation, family and community, but it has not necessarily been dangerous to individuals. Today, under Covid lockdown, the state’s imposition of forced isolation and idleness – and its campaign of fearmongering – reveals the state’s reckless disregard for individuals’ welfare.
Exactly when the state transitioned from being essentially benign to mainly malign depends on your perspective. Peter Hitchens might state that it became irreversible in 1997 with the election of Blair’s Labour Party or with the adoption of progressivism by David Cameron around 2009. Perhaps the slippage towards serfdom was inherent in the Fabian principles of 1945. Regardless, years of Blair’s invasive paternalism and Tory reluctance to let go of the levers of nudge politics and social behaviourism paved the way for the hysterical safetyism of Covid lockdown.
Things change. The British state is not what it was; the BBC is no longer the respected broadcaster which attempted to be impartial and inclusive; the Sun and the Daily Telegraph cannot be described as politically or socially conservative – nor can the Anglican Church or the Conservative Party, complete with the globalist slogan of ‘build back better’. The frog has well and truly been boiled, incrementally. Supposed beacons of conservativism, tradition and neutrality have been in the hands of progressives and activists for some time now.
Where government ends and private corporations begin is unclear. The massive sums pumped into newspapers and broadcasters to advertise lockdown promulgations and spread fear propaganda has kept newspapers solvent. The press is now an arm of government, as seen in its near-universal support for the principles of lockdown and mask-wearing. Small firms were closed while giant ones stayed open; no one could buy shoes from a shop but they could order them via Amazon. Government-enforced suppression of market competition led to a massive wealth transfer to mega corporations. Meanwhile, Big Tech suppresses criticism of Covid measures.
Corporate partners do the bidding of the government not simply due to pressure or money: civil servants and corporate management share outlooks and goals. There is no conspiracy per se, just a convergence of interests and outlooks. The managerial elite of the civil service, police, judiciary, NHS, schools, universities, major political parties, the Church of England, mainstream press, NGOs and mega corporations see the British population as in need of their stewardship.
Lessons from behind the Iron Curtain
I lived in the territory of the former GDR and often talked to Germans about their experiences of communism. They told me there was an official culture (where everyone knew what the acceptable line was) and an informal culture (where one could tell the truth among friends). Of course, in a state riddled with informants, one could never be entirely sure of one’s safety, but the evident falsity of claims made by the state and the failure of socialism (except for the senior Party members) showed anyone who wanted to apply objectivity that they lived in a system that was both hostile and crumbling. They knew that schools and the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation were for the benefit not of children but of the Party. They understood that the state was lying to them and that the media could not be trusted.
Our sense of normality is established between the ages of 15 and 25. So if you ask someone in their 60s about the probity of the BBC, they will be reaching back to the 1970s or 1980s to recall not facts but how they felt. That BBC is long gone but it is painful to admit such a loss. In Britain, older people, authoritarian-inclined individuals and youngsters fired by idealism view the state and its adjuncts as essentially beneficial. To admit that, as in the GDR, the state works for its own interests above ours is a difficult pill to swallow. Many compatriots and family members close their eyes and ears in an attempt to deny the frightening possibility that authorities in which they have placed their faith do not care about their welfare and are prepared to impose arbitrary, ineffective and cruel policies.
We need to treat all arms of the British state with the suspicion that residents of the GDR had for their state. We must withhold our trust until it has been earned by anyone in a position of power.
To use an old cliché, “the cat is out of the bag.”
For perhaps the first time since the COVID Plandemic started at the beginning of 2020, Americans who get most of their information solely through the corporate media, which is heavily funded by Big Pharma, got a dose of reality on just what exactly has been going on for the past 16 months or so, thanks to Tucker Carlson, and his 45-minute interview with Dr. Peter McCullough last week on his “Tucker Carlson Today” show on Fox News.
Dr. Peter McCullough is well-known to most Health Impact News readers, as we have featured his testimony before the Texas Senate as well as the U.S. Congress in previous articles. See:
Viewers of this Fox Network program learned that there is, in fact, a worldwide conspiracy to suppress effective treatments for COVID patients in favor of experimental COVID injections.
To be sure, neither Tucker nor Dr. McCullough used the politically explosive term “conspiracy,” but they used other terms that communicate the exact same thing.
Dr. McCullough, for example, throughout the interview when referring to why other doctors and health agencies were not educating the public about effective early treatments that have been proven to save lives, used the term “group think,” and kept saying that “something is up” worldwide, to the point where Tucker kept pressing him to state why he thought this was happening.
Dr. McCullough eventually replied: “This is the goal of investigative reporters to figure out.”
Because to discuss the “why” this is happening was not the focus of this interview, and would have led to discussions about Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, their ties to eugenics and establishing a New World Order, etc. – topics beyond the expertise of Dr. McCullough.
To his credit, however, Dr. McCullough did allude to some of these things by bringing up the Nuremburg Code, and how doctors today are violating it.
But this interview was focused clearly on one single question: Why is nobody discussing COVID treatment protocols outside of the new experimental “vaccines”?
And Tucker was brilliant in this interview.
First, he chose the correct person to discuss this, Dr. Peter McCullough.
Dr. Peter McCullough is a consultant cardiologist and Vice Chief of Medicine at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, TX. He is a Principal Faculty in internal medicine for the Texas A & M University Health Sciences Center.
Dr. McCullough is an internationally recognized authority on the role of chronic kidney disease as a cardiovascular risk state with over 1000 publications and over 500 citations in the National Library of Medicine.
He is the most published scientist in the history of his field.
Anyone in the corporate media who wants to now label Dr. McCullough as a “quack” will be basically shooting themselves in the foot.
Dr. McCullough is not anti-vaxx, and neither is Tucker Carlson.
When you watch this interview, you will see two people who have been educated to believe in the medical system, but who obviously see that something is not right with the way the entire world has responded to COVID, where hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. have died needlessly, because they were told to go home with COVID-19, because there was no treatment for it, when in fact there were successful treatments.
That lie has now been exposed to MILLIONS of people worldwide, thanks to the audience of Tucker Carlson.
People have asked me why Tucker Carlson is all of a sudden telling the truth about the COVID Plandemic, and if he is “controlled opposition.”
I don’t think so, after watching this interview. I think he is like the many other honest doctors in the field of medicine, like Dr. McCullough, who although they believe in vaccines and pharmaceutical products, recognize that there are evil people with evil intentions running this COVID show, and their consciences will no longer allow them to be silent.
Tucker Carlson has one of the highest rated shows on Cable TV. He is obviously putting his own career on the line to expose this, choosing to follow the truth wherever it leads, no matter what it is going to cost him.
One of things that impressed me the most about this interview, was that even though Fox News is mostly a Right Wing/Conservative/Republican platform, partisan politics NEVER entered the discussion. Just good, solid journalism.
This is a NON-PARTISAN issue that affects EVERYONE!
Students looking forward to getting back to college are getting letters from 100 to 200 colleges notifying them of a new prerequisite: getting fully vaccinated against COVID-19. As one letter states, this is because of our “our continued desire to protect the health and safety of our community.” This includes high-risk individuals in the surrounding community or wherever the students go in the “mass migration” at the end of the semester, according to the American College Health Association (ACHA).
The main purpose of the requirement is not to protect the students themselves. Of all COVID deaths, only about 0.1% have been in 15-to-24-year-olds. Yet young people can suffer death or serious disability after getting the jab. (Authorities point out that it is not necessarily because of the jab.) According to a controversial independent analysis, the aggressive Israeli vaccination campaign killed more than 200 times as many young persons as the coronavirus itself could have killed during the same 35-week period.
One of the commenters on the ACHA’s recommendation wrote: “It is perfectly reasonable for a society to expect its members, *all* of its members, to take up such risks on behalf of everyone. Unless you plan on putting a bullet in your own head on your thirty ninth birthday, one day *you* will be that elderly person who benefits disproportionately from universal vaccination. To not accept that risk now, yet expect that protection later, would make you a hypocrite.”
So much for the parental instinct to protect children—instead of using or sacrificing them!
We do not know the precise number of post-vaccine “adverse events,” because of incomplete reporting, or the percentage that were caused by the jab and not coincidental. But one can see the number and types of events reported to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) or the more user-friendly British Yellow Card system. These include death, clotting or bleeding problems, paralysis, blindness, and miscarriages (213 in VAERS as of today).
The long-term adverse events cannot yet be known. The prospect of most concern to the young women calling our office is infertility. There is no evidence that the products currently available cause infertility. And also no evidence that they don’t. There are plausible reasons to worry. Viral spike protein has been found in placentas from mothers who gave birth after having COVID. And the spike protein itself, without any virus, can attach to the lining of blood vessels and many tissues, and even cross the blood-brain barrier, and wreak havoc.
Getting your own body to make spike protein is what these genetically engineered products do.
Concerning fertility, the one relevant animal experiment, in 1,273 Sprague-Dawley rats, showed a numerically lower pregnancy rate, but within the facility’s historical range. The rats were not injected in early pregnancy when organs are forming, to check for birth defects.
There are thousands of reports of menstrual irregularities, though these are not officially recognized as side effects, and many things including anxiety can affect the menstrual cycle. There are worries disseminated in social media but debunked by fact-checkers that menstrual problems and other effects can result from contacts with vaccinated persons.
The vaccine-induced spike proteins are supposed to stay attached to your cells and cause your body to make antibodies that will recognize the virus. Can they be shed into the environment and picked up by others by contact or inhalation? I don’t know of a mechanism. But it seems odd to me that the Pfizer experimental trials not only excluded women who were or might soon become pregnant, but also required men to abstain or use a condom for 28 days post injection. Just FDA bureaucracy and “abundance of caution”?
There is no abundance of caution in forcing this product onto students entering their prime reproductive years. No concern about “reproductive rights.”
It is unlawful to use coercion to gain acceptance of products available only through an Emergency Use Authorization, but colleges are confident of quick FDA approval, even though trials won’t be complete until 2022 or 2023.
So, what can students do? Be cheerful or reluctant participants in a massive uncontrolled experiment and hope for the best? Seek an exemption? Or pause their education plans—and outrageous tuition?
There are “help wanted” signs everywhere. For learning, there are libraries, and more on-line opportunities will spring up. A college degree may be unnecessary or can wait. The biological window for having a family will close. How much risk of infertility should young people take?
With the exception of the impending departure of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan, if it occurs, the White House seems to prefer to use aggression to deter adversaries rather than finesse. The recent exchanges between Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a meeting in Alaska demonstrate how Beijing has a clear view of its interests which Washington seems to lack. Blinken initiated the acrimonious exchange when he cited “deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters, and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today.” He then threatened “I said that the United States relationship with China will be competitive where it should be, collaborative where it can be, adversarial where it must be” before adding “I’m hearing deep satisfaction that the United States is back, that we’re reengaged with our allies and partners. I’m also hearing deep concern about some of the actions your government is taking.”
The Chinese Foreign Minister responded sharply, rejecting U.S. suggestions that it has a right to interfere in another country’s domestic policies, “I think we thought too well of the United States, we thought that the U.S. side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols. The United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength. We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image, and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world.” Yi had a point. Ironically, most of the world believes that the U.S. represents a greater threat to genuine democracy than does either China or Russia.
In another more recent interview Blinken has accused the Chinese of acting “more aggressively abroad” while President Biden has claimed that Beijing has a plan to replace America as the world’s leading economic and military power. U.S. United Nations envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield has also delivered the same message that Washington is preparing to take no prisoners, pledging to push back against what she called China’s “authoritarian agenda” through the various agencies that make up the UN bureaucracy. Indeed, the United States seems trapped in its own rhetoric, finding itself in the middle of a situation with China and Taiwan where warnings that Beijing is preparing to use force to recover its former province leave Washington with few options to support a de facto ally. Peter Beinart in a recent op-ed observes how the White House has been incrementally increasing its diplomatic ties with Taiwan even as it both declares itself “rock solid” on defending while also maintaining “strategic ambiguity.”
China understands its interests while the U.S. continues to be bewildered by Beijing’s successful building of trade alliances worldwide. Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin, reputedly an excellent chess player, is able to think about genuine issues in three dimensions and is always at least four moves ahead of where Biden and his advisers are at any time. Biden public and video appearances frequently seem to be improvisations as he goes along guided by his teleprompter while Putin is able to explain issues clearly, apparently even in English.
A large part of Biden’s problem vis-à-vis both China and Russia is that he has inherited a U.S. Establishment view of foreign and national security policy options. It is based on three basic principles. First, that America is the only superpower and can either ignore or comfortably overcome the objections of other nations to what it is doing. Second, an all-powerful and fully resourced United States can apply “extreme pressure” to recalcitrant foreign governments and those regimes will eventually submit and comply with Washington’s wishes. And third, America has a widely accepted leadership role of the so-called “free world” which will mean that any decision made in Washington will immediately be endorsed by a large number of other nations, giving legitimacy to U.S. actions worldwide.
What Joe Biden actually thinks is, of course, unknown though he has a history of reflexively supporting an assertive and even belligerent foreign policy during his many years in Congress. Kamala Harris, who many believe will be succeeding Biden before too long, appears to have no definitive views at all beyond the usual Democratic Party cant of spreading “democracy” and being strong on Israel. That suggests that the real shaping of policy is coming from the apparatchik and donor levels in the party, to include the neocon-lite Zionist triumvirate at the State Department consisting of Tony Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Kagan as well as the upper-level bureaucracies at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, which all support an assertive and also interventionist foreign policy to keep Americans “safe” while also increasing their budgets annually. Such thinking leaves little room for genuine national interests to surface.
Biden’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken is, for example, the perfect conformist bureaucrat, shaping his own views around established thinking and creating caveats to provide the Democratic Party leadership with some, though limited, options. Witness for example the current White House attitude towards Iran, which is regarded, along with Russia, as a permanent enemy of the United States. President Biden has expressed his interest in renegotiating a non-nuclear proliferation treaty with the Iranians, now being discussed by diplomats without direct contact in Austria. But Blinken undercuts that intention by wrapping the talks in with other issues that are intended to satisfy the Israelis and their friends in Congress that will make progress unlikely if not impossible. They include eliminating Iran’s alleged role as a regional trouble maker and also ending the ballistic missile development programs currently engaged in by the regime. The downside to all of this is that having a multilateral agreement to limit Iranian enhancement of uranium up to a bomb-making level is very much in the U.S. interest, but it appears to be secondary to other politically motivated side discussions which will derail the process.
A foreign and national security policy based on political dogma rather than genuine interests can obviously generate some disconnects, unlike in Russia or China, where redlines and national interests are clearly understood and acted upon. To cite yet another dangerous example of playing with fire that one is witnessing in Eastern Europe, the simple understanding that for Russia Belarus and Ukraine are frontline states that could pose existential threats to Moscow if they were to move closer to the west and join NATO appears to be lacking. The U.S. prefers to stand the question on its head and claims that the real issue is “spreading democracy,” which it is not. Policy makers in Washington might consider what Washington would likely do if Mexico and Canada were to be threatened with foreign interference that might bring about their joining a military alliance hostile to the United States.
The American Establishment-driven foreign policy thinking clearly has trouble in accommodating the obvious understanding that the U.S. actually becomes more vulnerable every time it interferes in China’s trade practices or gives the green light for alliances like NATO to expand. Expansion of the national security policy components often brings in another client state that rarely has anything whatsoever to contribute and which, on the contrary, becomes a burden, relying for their own security on overstretched American military resources. In return, the expansion itself guarantees that a hostile and genuinely threatened Russia will take steps of its own to counter what it sees as a potential grave threat to its own security and national identity.
Quite simply, America’s national security should dictate that the United States treat China as a competitor rather than an enemy while also disengaging from support and encouragement of Ukraine’s irredentist ambitions as quickly as possible. A recent shipment of offensive weapons to Kiev should become the last such initiative and speeches by American politicians pledging “unwavering support” for Ukraine should be considered unacceptable. Washington should meanwhile reject any clandestine attempts to overthrow Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus and make clear to Vladimir Putin that it will not support any NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, which admittedly was a pledge already made when the Soviet Union collapsed that was subsequently ignored by President Bill Clinton. Thanks to Bill, America is now obligated to defend not only Western Europe but also Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia, the Baltic States and tiny little Montenegro.
In short, United States engagement in complicated overseas quarrels should be limited to areas where genuine vital interests are at stake. In fact, by that standard one should begin to emphasize the security impact of the crisis on America’s southern border, which has a completely different genesis and is being driven by politics. As British statesman Lord Palmerston said in 1848 “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” The United States government would be very wise to be guided by that advice.
Western countries are developing rules without the consent of the rest of the international community, and are both undermining and circumventing the United Nations. That’s according to Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister.
Speaking on Wednesday at a joint press conference in Moscow with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Lavrov reiterated Russia’s support for the organization, and criticized those who take individual approaches, instead of using established collective decision-making mechanisms.
In particular, he noted that some countries engage in “illegitimate actions,” such as using force “without the approval by the UN Security Council,” as well as unilaterally imposing sanctions.
“We consider developing certain ‘rules’ behind the back of the greater part of the international community and then imposing them on others as universal norms unacceptable and dangerous practice,” Lavrov explained. “The ‘rules-based order’ concept promoted by our Western colleagues is unrelated to either law or universal morality.”
In his opinion, the idea of ‘rules’ causes damage to the coordinating role of the UN, and has caused an imbalance in the architecture of global governance.
The Foreign Minister also expressed his support for Guterres’ attempts to resolve crises by political and diplomatic means, including through mediation. The UN Secretary-General was visiting Moscow for his annual face-to-face discussions with Russian leadership.
Wednesday was not the first time Lavrov slammed the so-called ‘rules based order.’ Last week, Lavrov accused Western countries of imposing totalitarianism in international relations by forcing their political positions on other countries. In particular, he pointed the finger at the US and the EU, accusing them of turning away from the principles of democracy and multilateralism.
In February, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova echoed the same sentiment, when she accused Western countries of resolving global problems in a private group without inviting both Russia and China.
“Our Western partners seek to resolve issues in a narrow circle and advance decisions that they are comfortable with, which will later be imposed on other members of the international community through the prism of the ‘rules-based world order’,” she said.
Western journalists, always mindful of the limits imposed by the ruling class, have a million ways of minimizing or mystifying Israeli brutality in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where several Palestinian families are set to be expelled to make way for Jewish settlers.
It’s not so simple as straight-up ethnic cleansing, they declare. There’s a convoluted history to consider, involving Israelis, Palestinians, Ottomans, Englishmen, and Jordanians. The Israeli courts, after all, examined the evidence and determined that the properties in question were Jewish. The Israelis aren’t seizing Palestinian homes at random; they’re engaged in a legal project of urban planning.
The apologists aren’t wrong. The seizures in Sheikh Jarrah, which have been ongoing for two decades, are ratified by the Israeli state. That’s exactly the problem. The Israeli state isn’t a neutral party proffering legal decisions according to impartial, humanistic criteria. The main purpose of the Zionist entity is to dispossess Palestinians. Certainly it has other reasons for being, but its primary function since being dreamed up by European fantasists at the end of the 19th century has been to maraud and plunder. The violence in Sheikh Jarrah isn’t exceptional. It is Zionism distilled to its purest expression.
Palestinians don’t need to respect the institutions of the Zionist state precisely because those institutions negate the Palestinians’ simplest political imperative: existence. Those institutions represent the machinery of colonization. All settler colonies come equipped with a legal apparatus to validate their cruelty. We cannot expect Western pundits and politicians to question the institutional logic so harmful to Palestinians, for their own legitimacy is contingent on the reproduction of state power.
Palestinians will never concede rights of habitation to Israeli courts. Those courts confer to themselves jurisdiction over Palestinian life, but Palestinian claims to life have a much stronger basis: an age-old history in the towns and neighborhoods they inhabit, a culture indivisible from their surroundings, a language of freedom concordant to the beauty of the land. Palestinians know full-well that they belong. Israeli courts produce delusional soliloquies.
The logic underlying land seizure in Sheikh Jarrah is nonsensical to the point of insanity. First of all, the logic tries to deplete observers of empathy. Families live in those homes, actual human beings with complex needs and aspirations. They will be made homeless. We’re asked not to care because those human beings are incidental to the more important project of colonial statecraft. The fate of those families is a nonstory; the settler colony’s wish fulfillment is the natural order of things.
More nonsensically, we’re asked to assign ethnic characteristics to abstractions and inanimate objects. The basis for Israel’s aggression in Sheikh Jarrah (as throughout all of historic Palestine) is repossession of so-called Jewish property. The property, in other words, doesn’t belong to people who happen to be Jewish. The property itself is Jewish—nobody can specify which denomination—and is therefore fit only for a certain kind of inhabitant. The property has some kind of innate disposition. It is apparently capable of worship. It becomes a crass approximation of humanity. Endowing housing units with confessional qualities exemplifies the problem of prioritizing property over sentient life: a dwelling has no utility beyond the project of demographic engineering. Under the Zionist regime, even brick and mortar are sectarian.
The land suffers a similar fate. Zionists conceptualize it as “Jewish,” rendering the natural world a topography of exclusion. In their ruthless schema, land is neither pleasure nor sustenance. It is a commodity. Like all resources in the colonial economy, access is granted (or limited) according to discriminatory criteria, in this case religious identity, as defined by the government. There is no real notion of the commons in Zionism. Public space is deeply personal, demarcated and apportioned based on a crude obsession with genetics. Biology isn’t an impetus to kinship, but a pretext for segregation, rigid and permanent.
Having been anointed Jewish, the land ceases to be dynamic. It is an ideological fabrication with fixed characteristics. It doesn’t seem to bother the chattering classes in the United States that Israel’s sanctified self-image requires an aggressive military apparatus, that it comes to fruition only by tossing innocent people out of their homes and destroying the possibility of a functional civil society. Their own country, after all, was built on the same kind of racialized violence.
Palestinians do not adhere to the correct religion and so they become surplus. Displacement is their natural destiny. The soldiers arrive with batons and sound bombs, with tear gas and live ammunition. They wave court orders explaining that the neighborhood must host a different class of resident. The settlers accompanying the soldiers create a bloody ruckus. Together, soldier and settler unleash hell on people whose primary motivation is to exist. This is what colonizers like to call “democracy.”
The land is Jewish. The houses are Jewish, too. The Palestinians are merely human. There is no place for such creatures in an inhumane society.
This article was originally published in Arabic at Awan.
According to modelling by University of Sydney and ETH Zürich, scaling back total production and placing a cap on maximum wealth would not only save the planet, it would also allow us all to enjoy shorter working weeks and the financial security of a generous universal basic income.
Well-being can be maintained in a degrowth transition. […]
Degrowth focuses on the global North and is defined as an equitable, democratic reduction in energy and material use while maintaining wellbeing. A decline in GDP is accepted as a likely outcome of this transition. […]
“We can still satisfy peoples’ needs, maintain employment and reduce inequality with degrowth, which is what distinguishes this pathway from recession,” Mr Keyßer says.
“However, a just, democratic and orderly degrowth transition would involve reducing the gap between the haves and have-nots, with more equitable distribution from affluent nations to nations where human needs are still unmet — something that is yet to be fully explored.”
A ‘degrowth’ society could include:
A shorter working week, resulting in reduced unemployment alongside increasing productivity and stable economic output.
Universal basic services independent of income, for necessities i.e. food, health care, transport.
Limits on maximum income and wealth, enabling a universal basic income to be increased and reducing inequality, rather than increasing inequality as is the current global trend.
I think it is only fair to give the professors an opportunity to showcase their degrowth theories, by slashing their university funding, so they can demonstrate by example how much happier we would be if we all embraced a permanent reduction in income.
Throughout the pandemic, governments have claimed to be following “the science”. But of course, many aspects of “the science” were never settled.
The WHO, as well as the UK Government, initially told us not to wear face masks. They then decided that face masks were essential. Countries like Australia and New Zealand introduced border controls in early February. Meanwhile, UK scientists were advising against port-of-entry screening. Researchers predicted there would be 96,000 deaths in Sweden by July. But as it turned out, there were less than 6,000.
Of course, many people have been sceptical of “the science” (by which I mean the officially endorsed science) from the very beginning. And of course, they’ve formed communities online with other like-minded persons. (Lockdown Sceptics would be one example of such a community.)
In an unpublished paper, researchers from MIT sought to understand how the users of these communities obtain, analyse, share and curate information. Surprisingly (to them), they found that users place a premium on data literacy and scientific rigour.
The researchers used a mixed methods design. First, they analysed a large sample of pandemic-related tweets sent between January and July 2020. Second, they employed ethnographic methods to study users on “anti-mask” Facebook groups. (Note that they use “anti-mask” as a “synecdoche for a broad spectrum of beliefs: that the pandemic is exaggerated, schools should be reopening, etc.”.)
In their analysis of Twitter data, the researchers found that sceptics “share the second-highest number of charts across the top six communities”, and that they are “the most prolific producers of area/line charts”, while sharing “the fewest number of photos”. They also found that such individuals “often create polished counter-visualizations that would not be out of place in scientific papers”.
In their study of “anti-mask” Facebook groups, the researchers found that users “value unmediated access to information and privilege personal research and direct reading over “expert interpretations”, and that “their approach to the pandemic is grounded in more scientific rigour, not less”.
“Most fundamentally,” the researchers write, “the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution”. They note:
While academic science is traditionally a system for producing knowledge within a laboratory, validating it through peer review, and sharing results within subsidiary communities, anti-maskers reject this hierarchical social model. They espouse a vision of science that is radically egalitarian and individualist.
According to the researchers, “anti-maskers often reveal themselves to be more sophisticated in their understanding of how scientific knowledge is socially constructed than their ideological adversaries”, and data literacy is a “quintessential criterion for membership within the community they have created”.
Based on these descriptions, one might assume the paper was written by a cadre of undercover sceptics. But the researchers make clear they are “not promoting these views”. Overall, it’s a fascinating study which is worth reading in full.
Following another confrontation between Senator Rand Paul and White House medical advisor Anthony Fauci Tuesday, during which Paul questioned Fauci about his extensive ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, CNN’s Anderson Cooper declared that Paul should “have more respect at least for medical science.”
In a combative exchange with @RandPaul, Dr. Fauci defends the NIH funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology, insists no taxpayer money went toward creating Covid-19 pic.twitter.com/QQyTPbwh3g
Reporting on the exchange, the CNN host proclaimed that Paul is “an ophthalmologist. You would think that he would be — have more respect at least for medical science.”
It’s unclear how asking valid questions about Fauci and the NIH’s funding of the Wuhan lab where dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses were being conducted represents a disrespect for science. […]
Commenting on his latest exchange with Fauci, Paul himself stressed that Fauci “was being dishonest.“
“In fact, one of the main papers published by Dr. Shi in the Wuhan Institute says in the byline, “Funded by the NIH,” and funded specifically by the NIAI which is AID, which is Fauci’s group,” Paul urged.
“So, no, he completely dissembled on that. He’s leading you on to believe something that’s not true,” The Senator added. … Read full article
COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers (and their allies in mainstream science and government) have so far failed to acknowledge evidence from adverse event reporting schemes that their products are killing and injuring thousands. They say that apart from ‘extremely rare’ allergic reactions – to which they have reluctantly added ‘extremely rare’ blood clotting disorders – there are no known mechanisms whereby such damage could be occurring.
That position was never tenable. The famous spike protein, which most of the vaccines introduce into the body as a means of countering the virus, is in itself a dangerous toxin. The reason it is so dangerous is similar to the reason why the virus itself is a threat to human beings: it has characteristics that enable it to bind to, and distort the action of, a wide range of human cells.
These characteristics almost certainly stem from it being a chimeric virus, originally native to Chinese bats but manipulated in the laboratory to test its capacity to change into a threat to humans.
Scientists hope that the vaccine, through challenging our immune systems by getting our body cells to manufacture small quantities of the protein, will protect against much greater damage from the virus. But the nature of the protein is such as to make it inherently risky, a risk that may be dangerously multiplied when vaccination coincides with a wave of infection, as in India recently.
A paper widely held to be the ‘smoking gun’ for ultimately bequeathing us Covid-19 was published in Nature in 2015 by US and Chinese researchers, who deliberately altered the spike protein of a bat coronavirus so that it could infect human cells. The work, mainly at the laboratory in Wuhan, China, from which many believe the virus to have accidentally escaped, was claimed to ‘underscore the potential threat of cross-species transmission’ of the virus.
The researchers acknowledged that these so-called ‘gain of function’ experiments carried risks, writing: ‘The potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens.’
Also in 2015, a document written by Chinese scientists and public health officials discussed the weaponisation of such viruses, according to a report published on Saturday by Weekend Australian. It says the document is discussed in a book, What really happened in Wuhan, by The Australian investigations writer Sharri Markson, to be published by HarperCollins in September.
Entitled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, the paper is said to have predicted that World War Three would be fought with biological weapons. It describes SARS viruses as a ‘new era of genetic weapons’ which can be ‘artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed in a way never seen before’.
Despite the enormous importance to the world of getting to the truth of how Covid-19 originated, the scientific establishment has seemed desperate to deny the possibility that it was man-made.
In March last year Nature added an ‘Editors’ note’ to the ‘smoking gun’ paper, stating: ‘We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing Covid-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.’
This is, to say the least, being economical with the truth, and may come to be seen as an extreme betrayal of science by a journal world-famous for its supposed reliability.
More than a year ago, an Anglo-Norwegian team of scientists pointed to the 2015 Nature report findings as the most likely precursor of research which culminated in SARS-COV-2, the virus causing Covid-19. They emphasised that vaccine makers who failed to acknowledge its chimeric nature might unwittingly put the public at risk.
British vaccines expert Angus Dalgliesh, a London University professor of oncology, co-authored with leading Norwegian researchers a paper that spells out in ruthless detail the sequence of laboratory events through which they claim the SARS-COV-2 spike protein arose. This understanding was reached through the team’s own work aimed at developing a safe candidate Covid vaccine.
The paper is headed: ‘The evidence which suggests that this is no naturally evolved virus – A reconstructed aetiology of the SARS-COV-2 spike.’
After analysing the biochemistry of the spike, the team concludes that it has six inserts, ‘unique fingerprints . . . indicative of purposive manipulation’. It describes four linked published research projects ‘which, we suggest, show by deduction how, where, when and by whom the SARS-COV-2 spike acquired its special characteristics’.
The authors write: ‘Since, regrettably, international access has not been allowed to the relevant laboratories or materials, since Chinese scientists who wished to share their knowledge have not been able to do so and indeed since it appears that preserved virus material and related information have been destroyed, we are compelled to apply deduction to the published scientific literature, informed by our own biochemical analyses.
‘We refute pre-emptively objection that this methodology does not result in absolute proof by observing that to make such a statement is to misunderstand scientific logic. The longer the chain of causation of individual findings that is shown, especially converging from different disciplines, the greater the confidence in the whole.’
The researchers say that the four key ‘gain of function’ studies are linked in two ways: scientifically, in that the third and fourth build on the results of the first and second; and in the continuity of the institution and personnel across all four.
‘The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a key collaborator in all these projects and Dr Zheng-Li Shi is one of the institute’s most experienced virologists and bat specialists. She is a common thread through all the key research projects.’
The unique ‘fingerprints’ of manipulation which make what was once a bat virus so dangerous include the following:
A large part of the spike protein has high human similarity, ‘a built-in stealth property’ that also ‘implies a high risk for the development of severe adverse events/toxicity and even antibody-dependent enhancement’ [a problem in which a previous infection or vaccination increases rather than reduces the risk from subsequent infection]. Specific precautions would be needed when using the spike protein in any vaccine candidate, ‘precautions that might not suggest themselves to designers employing conventional methodologies and innocent assumptions about the target virus’.
The spike protein has inserts on its surface which greatly increase its ability to hook into, infect and harm a wide range of human cells. ‘Such a result is typically the objective of gain of function experiments to create chimeric viruses of high potency.’
The paper tracks in detail how these and other unique features of the virus came about, from work on bat and human viruses first reported in 2008 by Dr Zheng-Li Shi and Wuhan Institute of Virology colleagues, through collaboration with American researchers working with human epithelial cells, which are widespread throughout the body, and culminating in a virus capable of infecting human lung, taste, intestinal and other tissues.
Despite the eminence of its authors the paper has remained largely hidden from view, being published only on a Norwegian website.
Its importance, however, is highlighted by a string of recent research findings which confirm that Covid-19 is much more than a simple respiratory infection, and that even without the virus, the spike protein can damage blood vessel linings (epithelial tissues), causing heart and circulatory disorders as well as respiratory disease and gut problems (see here and here and here and here and here).
Despite millions seemingly receiving the vaccine safely, scientists and regulators may be failing to recognise deaths and injuries linked to this wide-ranging toxic potential of the spike protein that forms the basis of most of the jabs. The research findings add urgency to calls on the government and regulators to investigate numerous reports of vaccine-related deaths, especially in the elderly and care homes, and especially in the hours or days immediately following vaccination.
Okay this is one to share big time! A stunningly insightful Psychiatry expert absolutely nails it on the realities of Lockdowns! Dr. Mikle Eades’ excellent summary of the Stupid People here: https://www.proteinpower.com/basic-la…
Why are we obsessed with danger, and conversely with safety? The Swedish psychiatrist and author David Eberhard comments on the effects that a lockdown has on a population, and on how we feel less and less secure despite arguably living in the safest period of time in human history. David has worked in psychiatry for most of his adult life, at multiple different centers in Stockholm. Since 2019, David is working as the head of staff at PRIMA Maria Addiction Care Clinic. In addition, he is a bestselling author and active lecturer, focusing on everything from responsibility and human rights and violations of these, to security thinking and child rearing. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
Taking a careful look at the run-up to the U.S./Israeli war on Iran exposes the inner workings of the U.S./Israeli deep state and the covert operations that the CIA and Mossad carry out around the world to lay the groundwork for war.
In this article, I will detail how the U.S. and Israel astroturfed protests in Iran, infiltrated them with rioters, and ran an atrocity propaganda campaign about Iran massacring protestors to manufacture consent for war.
This article will be an examination of the deep state’s war on Iran, prior to the full-scale U.S. invasion.
This article will be specific to Iran, but should be seen as a case study for how American, Israeli, and often British intelligence lay the groundwork for targets of empire around the world. … 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 