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How Can We Trust Institutions That Lied?

January 15, 2023

How Can We Trust Institutions That Lied?

Trust the Authorities, trust the Experts, and trust the Science, we were told. Public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic was only credible if it originated from government health authorities, the World Health Organization, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as scientists who parroted their lines with little critical thinking.

In the name of ‘protecting’ the public, the authorities have gone to great lengths, as described in the recently released Twitter Files (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) that document collusion between the FBI and social media platforms, to create an illusion of consensus about the appropriate response to Covid-19.

They suppressed ‘the truth,’ even when emanating from highly credible scientists, undermining scientific debate and preventing the correction of scientific errors. In fact, an entire bureaucracy of censorship has been created, ostensibly to deal with so-called MDM— misinformation (false information resulting from human error with no intention of harm); disinformation (information intended to mislead and manipulate); malinformation (accurate information intended to harm).

From fact-checkers like NewsGuard, to the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, the UK Online Safety Bill and the BBC Trusted News Initiative, as well as Big Tech and social media, all eyes are on the public to curtail their ‘mis-/dis-information.’

“Whether it’s a threat to our health or a threat to our democracy, there is a human cost to disinformation.” — Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC

But is it possible that ‘trusted’ institutions could pose a far bigger threat to society by disseminating false information?

Although the problem of spreading false information is usually conceived of as emanating from the public, during the Covid-19 pandemic, governments, corporations, supranational organisations and even scientific journals and academic institutions have contributed to a false narrative.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Of Economic Crises and Pandemics: Facebook as Fact, Government as Truth, Big Pharma as God

December 30, 2022

Of Economic Crises and Pandemics: Facebook as Fact, Government as Truth, Big Pharma as God

If events since March 2020 have shown us anything, it is that fear is a powerful weapon for securing hegemony. Any government can manipulate fear about certain things while conveniently ignoring real dangers that a population faces.

Author and researcher Robert J Burrowes says:

…if we were seriously concerned about our world, the gravest and longest-standing health crisis on the planet is the one that starves to death 100,000 people each day. No panic about that, of course.”

No panic because the controlling interests of the global food system have long profited from a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy that ensures people unnecessarily go hungry when corporate profit rather than need dictates policies.

US social commentator Walter Lippmann once said that ‘responsible men’ make decisions and must be protected from the ‘bewildered herd’ – the public. He added that the public should be subdued, obedient and distracted from what is really happening. Screaming patriotic slogans and fearing for their lives, they should be admiring with awe leaders who save them from destruction.

During COVID, Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern urged citizens to trust the government and its agencies for all information and stated:

Otherwise, dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.”

In the US, Fauci presented himself as ‘the science’. In New Zealand, Ardern was ‘the truth’. It was similar in countries across the world – different figures but the same approach.

Like other political leaders, Ardern clamped down on civil liberties with the full force of state violence on hand to ensure compliance with ‘the truth’. Those who questioned the COVID narrative – including world-renowned scientists – were smeared, shut down and censored.

It was an internationally orchestrated campaign involving governments, the big tech companies, media and the WHO, among others.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

What is the Next Thing that Will hit us? Brace for it, Because it may be Huge

December 9, 2022

What is the Next Thing that Will hit us? Brace for it, Because it may be Huge

Despite having ancient seers (the “haruspices”) as ancestors, I don’t claim to be able to predict the future. But I think I can propose scenarios for the future. So, what could be the next big thing that will hit us? I suggest it will be the disruption of the oil market caused by the recent measure of a price cap on Russian oil.

Do you remember how many things changed during the past 2-3 years, and changed so unbelievably fast? There was a pattern in these changes: one element was that we were told they were just temporary, another was that they were done for our sake. We were told that we needed “Two weeks to flatten the curve,” and that “the sanctions will cause the Russian economy to collapse in two weeks,” and many more things. Then, our problems will be solved and the world will return to normal. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the result was a “new normal,” not at all like the old one.

Now, the obvious question is “what next?” More exactly, “what are they going to hit us with, next time?” There is this idea that there may be a new pandemic, a new virus, or the old one returning. But, no. They are smarter than that — so far they have always been one step, maybe two, ahead of us. They are masters of propaganda, they know that propaganda is all based on memes and that memes have a finite lifetime. Old memes are like old newspapers, they are not interesting anymore. A particular bugaboo can’t scare people for too long, and the idea of scaring us with a pandemic virus is past its usefulness stage. They may have probed us with the “monkeypox” pandemic, and they saw that it didn’t work. It was obvious anyway. So, now what?

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Road to Totalitarianism (Revisited)

November 17, 2022

The Road to Totalitarianism (Revisited)

It feels like it’s finally over, doesn’t it, the whole “apocalyptic pandemic” thing? I mean, really, really over this time. Not like all those other times when you thought it was over, but it wasn’t over, and was like the end of those Alien movies, where it seems like Ripley has finally escaped, but the alien is hiding out in the shuttle, or the escape pod, or Ripley’s intestinal tract.

But this time doesn’t feel like that. This time it feels like it’s really, really over. Go out and take a look around. Hardly anyone is wearing masks anymore (except where masks are mandatory) or being coerced into submitting to “vaccinations” (except where “vaccination” is mandatory), and the hordes of hate-drunk New Normal fanatics who demanded that “the Unvaccinated” be segregated, censored, fired from their jobs, and otherwise demonized and persecuted, have all fallen silent (except for those who haven’t).

Everything is back to normal, right?

Wrong. Everything is not back to normal. Everything is absolutely New Normal. What is over is the “shock-and-awe” phase, which was never meant to go on forever. It was always only meant to get us here.

Where, you’re probably asking, is “here”? “Here” is a place where the new official ideology has been firmly established as our new “reality,” woven into the fabric of normal everyday life. No, not everywhere, just everywhere that matters. (Do you really think the global-capitalist ruling classes care what people in Lakeland, Florida, Elk River, Idaho, or some village in Sicily believe about “reality”?) Yes, most government restrictions have been lifted, mainly because they are no longer necessary, but in centers of power throughout the West, in political, corporate, and cultural spheres, in academia, the mainstream media, and so on, the New Normal has become “reality,” or, in other words, “just the way it is,” which is the ultimate goal of every ideology.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The US Can’t Make Enough Fuel and There’s No Fix in Sight

May 17, 2022

The US Can’t Make Enough Fuel and There’s No Fix in Sight

(Bloomberg) — From record gasoline prices to higher airfares to fears of diesel rationing ahead, America’s runaway energy market is disquieting both US travelers and the wider economy. But the chief driver isn’t high crude prices or even the rebound in demand: It’s simply too few refineries turning oil into usable fuels.

More than 1 million barrels a day of the country’s oil refining capacity — or about 5% overall — has shut since the beginning of the pandemic. Elsewhere in the world, capacity has shrunk by 2.13 million additional barrels a day, energy consultancy Turner, Mason & Co. estimates. And with no plans to bring new US plants online, even though refiners are reaping record profits, the supply squeeze is only going to get worse.

“We are on the razor’s edge,” said John Auers, executive vice president at Turner, Mason & Co. in Dallas. “We’re ripe for a potential supply crisis.”

The dearth of refining capacity has dire implications for both US consumers and global markets. At home, retail gasoline prices continue hitting new records, exacerbating some of the worst inflation American households have ever seen. Meanwhile, the East Coast is on the brink of a diesel shortage that risks crippling already strained supply chains that have disrupted the flow of everything from grocery staples to construction supplies in the last two years.

The factors fueling the refining shortage won’t surprise anyone: With demand for gasoline and jet fuel practically vanishing during the height of the pandemic, companies closed some of their least profitable crude-processing plants permanently…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Health Authorities Tracked Movements of Canadians via Cellphones During Pandemic

May 9, 2022

Health Authorities Tracked Movements of Canadians via Cellphones During Pandemic

PHAC claims data was anonymized.

Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

Health authorities in Canada tracked people’s movements via their cellphones during the pandemic, with trips to pharmacies and liquor stores being logged, it has been revealed.

“BlueDot, an intelligence analysis company, prepared movement reports for PHAC using anonymized data acquired from mobile devices. The reports helped the public health agency understand movement patterns during the pandemic,” reports Reclaim the Net.

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) was able to obtain detailed insights into people’s movements and recorded their visits to liquor stores, pharmacies, visits to friends and trips to other provinces, also collecting information on time spent in each location.

“Questions remain about the specifics of the data provided if Canadians’ rights were violated, and what advice the Liberal government was given,”said Conservative MP Damien Kurek.

The ethics committee asserted that the PHAC should have told Canadians their movements were potentially being monitored and given them the option to opt out.

The PHAC claimed the program was “not about following individuals’ trips to a specific location, but rather in understanding whether the number of visits to specific locations have increased or decreased over time.”

As we highlighted last week, the CDC purchased tracking data for millions of Americans’ mobile phones with an intention of monitoring their movements to see if they were complying with lockdowns, curfews and travel restrictions during the COVID pandemic.

During the first winter lockdown in January 2021, a poll found that a plurality of people in Britain supported giving the government powers to spy on people’s movements via cellphone tracking to enforce lockdown.

In the same month, Conservative MP Jeremy Hunt called for the government to use GPS tracking technology to ensure Brits were complying with COVID quarantine measures.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The devil is in the detail

February 20, 2022

The devil is in the detail

If you get your news from the BBC, you might be forgiven for thinking that the economic hit from the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions has come to an end. Indeed, if you merely skim through the headlines in your social media feed, you might believe that the UK is poised for an explosion of growth, the like of which we haven’t witnessed since the late 1960s. “Retail sales,” we are told, “rebound in January as Omicron eases.” The “UK economy rebounds,” they say, “with fastest growth since WW2.” Chancellor Sunak – who wants to be seen as a prime-minister-in-waiting – announced that:

“Today’s figures show that despite Omicron the economy was remarkably resilient. We were the fastest growing economy in the G7 last year and are forecast to continue being the fastest growing economy this year.”

The GDP figures are certainly better than they might have been if more businesses had been left to go bust during lockdown. Nevertheless, they are still well below February 2020, following the massive crash immediately after lockdown was ordered. As the Office for National Statistics explain:

“UK gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have increased by 1.0% in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2021… Compared with the same quarter a year ago, GDP increased by 6.5%.

“Following the large 9.4% fall in 2020 because of the initial impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and public health restrictions, UK GDP saw an annual rise of 7.5% in 2021.”

Worse still, manufacturing GDP was negative, and continues to lag well behind its February 2020 level:

“Production output fell by 0.4% in Quarter 4 2021 and is now 3.6% below its pre-coronavirus levels. The fall in production output was because of a 3.2% fall in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (energy) and a 4.5% fall in mining and quarrying.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How we Became What we Despised. Turning the West into a New Soviet Union

February 13, 2022

How we Became What we Despised. Turning the West into a New Soviet Union

For everything that happens, there is a reason for it to happen. Even for turning the former Free World into something that looks very much like the old “Evil Empire,” the Soviet Union. I understand that this series of reflections will be seen as controversial, but I thought that this matter is important and fascinating enough to deserve a discussion.

It all started two years ago when we were asked to stay home for two weeks “to flatten the curve.” Two years later, we are looking, bewildered, at the wreckage around us and asking ourselves: ‘what the hell has happened?’

In such a short time, we found that our world had turned into something very similar to one that we used to despite. The old Soviet Union, complete with heavy-handed police, censorship of the media, criminalization of dissent, internal passports, and the state intruding on matters that, once, were thought to be part of every citizen’s private decision sphere.

Surprising, perhaps. But it is a rule of the universe that everything that happens has a reason to happen. The Soviet Union was what it was because there were reasons for it to be that. It was not an alien world populated by little green men. It was an empire similar to the Western one, just a little smaller, and it concluded its cycle a few decades before us. We can learn a lot from its story.

Dmitri Orlov, born in Russia, was among the first who noted the parallel path that the Western and the Soviet empire were following. His first book was titled “Reinventing Collapse” (2011). Let me propose to you an excerpt from the book where Orlov tells us of an event he experienced in St. Petersburg in the years just after the collapse of the Union…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Authoritarian Madness: The Slippery Slope from Lockdowns to Concentration Camps

January 29, 2022

Authoritarian Madness: The Slippery Slope from Lockdowns to Concentration Camps

“All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwald, the Auschwitzes—all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers.”— Rod Serling, Deaths-Head Revisited

In the politically charged, polarizing tug-of-war that is the debate over COVID-19, we find ourselves buffeted by fear over a viral pandemic that continues to wreak havoc with lives and the economy, threats of vaccine mandates and financial penalties for noncompliance, and discord over how to legislate the public good without sacrificing individual liberty.

The discord is getting more discordant by the day.

Just recently, for instance, the Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board suggested that government officials should mandate mass vaccinations and deploy the National Guard “to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.”

In other words, lock up the unvaccinated and use the military to determine who gets to be “free.”

These tactics have been used before.

This is why significant numbers of people are worried: because this is the slippery slope that starts with well-meaning intentions for the greater good and ends with tyrannical abuses no one should tolerate.

For a glimpse at what the future might look like if such a policy were to be enforced, look beyond America’s borders.

In Italy, the unvaccinated are banned from restaurants, bars and public transportation, and could face suspensions from work and monthly fines. Similarly, France will ban the unvaccinated from most public venues.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Folly of Pandemic Censorship

January 27, 2022

The Folly of Pandemic Censorship

As the latest anti-Substack campaign shows, more and more people are forgetting why free speech works

Earlier this week, in the latest in a series of scolding campaigns, a Britain-based group called the Center for Countering Digital Hate gave a sneak peek at a research report on Substack to The Guardian and The Washington Post. Both outlets came out with their scare pieces this morning. From The Guardian:

A group of vaccine-skeptic writers are generating revenues of at least $2.5m (£1.85m) a year from publishing newsletters for tens of thousands of followers on the online publishing platform Substack, according to new research…

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of CCDH, said companies like Substack were under “no obligation” to amplify vaccine skepticism and make money from it. “They could just say no…”

The Post, citing “some misinformation experts say” — the pandemic version of “people familiar with the matter” — added:

These newer platforms cater to subscribers who seek out specific content that accommodates their viewpoints — potentially making the services less responsible for spreading harmful views, some misinformation experts say.

If these stories sound familiar, it’s because this same Center for Countering Digital Hate two years ago tried to pull the same stunt with The Federalist, using NBC to ask Google to crack down on them. Humorously, and typically — this happens a lot with these stories — that effort ended in fiasco. The piece NBC ended up writing boasting of the success of its “Verification Unit” in getting the site demonetized, entitled, “Google bans two websites from its ad platform over protest articles,” turned out to itself be misinformation. The Federalist was never banned, only warned, and the issue was its comments section, not its articles. Google had to issue a statement:

Google Communications @Google_Comms

The Federalist was never demonetized.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fact-Checkers Are Used to Confuse the Public: Sharyl Attkisson

January 26, 2022

Sharyl Attkisson, a five-time Emmy Award winning investigative journalist and host of “Full Measure,” in Leesburg, Virginia, on Jan. 14, 2022. (York Du/The Epoch Times)

Fact-Checkers Are Used to Confuse the Public: Sharyl Attkisson

Five-time Emmy award-winning journalist Sharyl Attkisson said she has seen an increased effort to manipulate the public to appreciate censorship and disapprove of journalism. One of the strategies that has been employed is the use of third-party fact-checkers, she said.

“Nearly every mode of information has been co-opted, if it can be co-opted by some group, [and] fact-checkers are no different,” Attkisson told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

“Either they’ve been co-opted, in many instances, or created for the purpose of distributing narratives and propaganda,” said Attkisson. “This is all part of a very well-funded, well-organized landscape that dictates and slants the information they want us to have.”

Attkisson said she first started to notice news being controlled in the early 2000s when the media company she was working for was actively trying to suppress certain stories.

“The pushback came to be more about keeping a story from airing or keeping a study from being reported on the news, not just giving the other side, not just making sure it was accurately reported,” she said of pharmaceutical company stories she was covering at the time.

In 2016 Attkisson heard former President Barack Obama say news needed to be curated, after which mainstream media outlets started to consistently use the term fake news to describe mostly conservative news stories that they deemed untrue.

“And I remember thinking that was such a strange thing to say, because there was no big movement among the public, that people needed to have their information curated, that someone needed to step in and tell us what to think, curate what was online…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rickards: Bad News, I’m Afraid

January 22, 2022

Rickards: Bad News, I’m Afraid

The breakdown of global supply chains is well-known by now. Whether it’s finding groceries in your supermarket, buying a new car or buying appliances like dishwashers and refrigerators, goods are scarce. Also, deliveries take forever and choices are limited.

Many people wonder why the problem isn’t going away. Here’s the answer:

The supply chain is a complex dynamic system. When any complex system collapses, you can look for specific causes but that’s usually a waste of time. Systems collapse internally because they are too large and too interconnected and require too many energy inputs to keep going.

Any specific cause is more likely to be a symptom than a true cause. It’s frustrating, but that’s the answer.

Most Americans’ first encounter with the supply chain meltdown was in the spring of 2020 during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Shoppers noticed that items like hand sanitizer and paper goods at Costco and other big-box stores were cleaned out.

It seemed that Americans who were locked down and quarantined at the time were hoarding these products because they had no idea when they would be allowed to venture out again.

The shortages were real, but were limited to specific products. The other aisles at Costco were stocked and so were all the other stores around (at least those that were allowed to remain open).

Now It’s Everything

But it’s not just Costco this time. It’s every supermarket, convenience store and other retail outlet from coast to coast. And it’s not just cleaning products and paper goods. Your local supermarket might have bare shelves for eggs, peanut butter, milk and other staples.

It’s not a case of being stocked out of all goods all the time. Your store is like a box of Cracker Jack – you never know what’s inside.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Australia’s Government Is From the Dark Ages

January 18, 2022

Australia’s Government Is From the Dark Ages

On July 27, 1656, senior leaders of the Jewish community in Amsterdam issued a writ of cherem— the Hebrew term for expulsion and excommunication.

Their target was a young, 23-year old Dutch/Portuguese intellectual named Baruch Spinoza, himself a Jew, whose dangerous crime was questioning the unquestionable teachings of the faith.

The Jewish elders proclaimed that “The Lord will rage against this man and… blot out his name from under heaven” and ordered that no Jew should communicate with him, offer him shelter, give him money, or read any of his writings.

A few years later, the Catholic Church followed suit and added all of Spinoza’s works to its Index of Banned Books. This makes Baruch Spinoza one of the few people in history to be banished from both the Jewish and Catholic religions.

His philosophy was widely misunderstood at the time. Everyone accused him of being an atheist, which was one of the worst things you could call someone in the 1600s.

But he wasn’t actually an atheist. Spinoza’s works were an attempt for him to reconcile his faith with certain religious teachings that were illogical, self-contradictory, or refuted by science.

He wrote extensively about his “intellectual love of God”. But simply for expressing intellectual independence, Spinoza was expelled from his own Jewish community.

Now, Novak Djokovic is hardly a Baruch Spinoza. But it is truly bizarre in the year 2022 to see someone be expelled from an advanced western democracy simply for expressing intellectual independence.

Just to catch you up, Novak Djokovic is a professional Tennis player from Serbia who is considered one of the all-time greats in the sport. He’s currently ranked #1 in the world and holds an incredible number of records in professional tennis.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Supermarkets Slash Hours As Workers Call Out Sick; Store Shelves Remain Bare

January 15, 2022

Supermarkets Slash Hours As Workers Call Out Sick; Store Shelves Remain Bare

Labor shortages at supermarkets across the country have increased in recent weeks as the COVID-19 omicron variant continues to spread. Workers are calling sick, and there are not enough cashiers, baggers, and stockers, forcing some supermarket chains to slash hours of operations. Compounding labor woes, supply chains are still severely snarled as food shortages are being reported nationwide.

WSJ reports supermarkets are having difficulty staying open as workers call out sick because of infection. Some grocers are frantically hiring new employees, using temporary employment agencies, and overworking current staff to keep stores from shuttering.

The seven-store supermarket chain Stew Leonard’s in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey had 200 employees in quarantine or isolation as of last Thursday despite a 90% employee-vaccination rate. This represents about 7% of all employees.

“We sort of feel like we’ve got to buckle down for round two,” Chief Executive Stew Leonard Jr. said, adding that the loss of employees to infections has hampered operations.

American supermarket chain Giant Eagle Inc. which operates 470 stores, has avoided closing locations amid the omicron surge by adjusting hours of operations. The company’s chief compliance officer, Vic Vercammen, said the company had seen a spike in workers calling sick because of infection.

Across Alabama and Georgia, Piggly Wiggly stores are overscheduling workers and using temporary work agencies to keep store shelves stocked as staffing woes developed this year because of the omicron spread. Operations have been affected, and store hours have been reduced in some locations.

In the Southeast, Harris Teeter supermarkets, owned by Kroger Co., will close one hour earlier, effective Monday, so that employees can restock shelves due to the loss of stockers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Producers Aren’t Keeping Up With Demand, Causing Prices to Stay High

January 14, 2022

Oil Producers Aren’t Keeping Up With Demand, Causing Prices to Stay High

OPEC Plus, the United States and others have been slow to ramp up output, lagging production goals.

Credit…Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

Nearly two years ago the world’s oil producers slammed on the brakes and drastically cut production as the pandemic gripped the world’s economies. The sharp pullback came with an implicit promise that as factories reopened and planes returned to the air, the oil industry would revive, too, gradually scaling up production to help economies return to prepandemic health.

It isn’t exactly turning out that way. Oil producers are finding it harder than expected to ramp up output. Members of the cartel OPEC Plus, which agreed to cut output by about 10 million barrels a day in early 2020, are routinely falling well short of their rising monthly production targets.

“In a lot of places, once output has been reduced, it is not easy to bring it back,” said Richard Bronze, the head of geopolitics at Energy Aspects, a London-based research firm.

Production in the United States, the world’s largest oil producer, has also been slow to recover from its one-million-barrel-a-day plummet in 2020, as companies and investors are wary of committing money amid climate change concerns and volatile prices. The Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. crude output in 2022, while rising, is likely to average half a million barrels a day below 2019 levels.

This global pattern of lagging production has helped push oil prices to seven-year highs, stoking inflation, which has become a political issue in the United States and elsewhere. Brent crude, the international standard, is close to $84 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate, the American benchmark, is selling for close to $82.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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