In Final Act, Trump Admin To Present 'Bombshell' Findings Blaming Wuhan Lab For COVID-19, WHO Cover-Up

As reported on Zero hedge this morning (link bellow), the Trump Administration will put what it knows on the table about the origin of Covid-19. 

What I struggled to understand, at least at the beginning was why so many scientists would go to such length to cover their Chinese colleagues. That is until you understand that the P4 technology was coming from France, the virus coming from Canada and other sources... In other words, they are all in this together!

On the other hand, we can be certain that we are dealing with brilliant people from the fact that instead of having a discussion about the risk of such research, we get a policy of accelerated genetically modified vaccines on a grand scale.

So as in most other human endeavor, the solution to our man-made problems is to do more of what generated the problem in the first place.  Who, not WHO, would have known?

In Final Act, Trump Admin To Present 'Bombshell' Findings Blaming Wuhan Lab For COVID-19, WHO Cover-Up

The Trump administration will present 'dramatic new evidence' that the virus which causes COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab, according to the Daily Mail, which adds that outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will make a "bombshell" announcement that SARS-CoV-2 did not naturally jump from bats to humans through an intermediary species - and was instead cultured by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where both Chinese and foreign experts have warned of shoddy bio-security for years.

The Britsh government (Daily Mail and all), meanwhile, dismissed the claims in advance - saying that 'all the credible scientific evidence does not point to a leak from the laboratory.'

This is of course patently false, as several prominent microbiologists - including one who worked in the Wuhan lab - have said it was likely created there and likely escaped. Two weeks ago, US National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger said there was a "growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus," while French intelligence warned of the possibility of a 'catastrophic leak' from the lab due to poor bio-security over a decade before the outbreak.

The lab’s highest security ‘P4’ section was built with French help in a deal signed off by Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. But after it opened in 2015, the French contingent due to work there were pushed out by China’s military. -Daily Mail

Meanwhile, China scrubbed "hundreds of pages of information" spanning over 300 studies conducted by the WIV, including some which discuss passing diseases from animals to humans. Totally normal behavior from innocent people, we're sure.

Pompeo is also set to cite close links between the Institute and the People’s Liberation Army.

He will point out its highest security section has always had a ‘dual use’ military and civilian purpose.

He is also expected to accuse the World Health Organisation of assisting in a Chinese cover-up by refusing to probe the lab’s possible role.

Its ten-person team tasked with investigating the pandemic’s origins will arrive in Wuhan tomorrow – but there is no mention of the lab in its official terms of reference. -Daily Mail

"We don’t know whether this virus was natural or artificially created, and if it came from the lab, whether this was an accident or deliberate. It would be immoral and foolish to allow any sort of cover-up," said former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who added that it was 'vital' that the WHO team investigate.

"If it emerges the virus did come from the lab, China will become the pariah of the world," he added.

That said, MIT / Harvard doctor Alina Chan, who has been investigating the origins of the pandemic, doesn't think the WHO is suited to conduct any investigation.

"We have to take the necessary steps to do a proper investigation and, based on the available information, I don’t think the WHO is up to the task," said Chan. Stanford professor of microbiology David Relman, meanwhile, has voiced fears that the WIV was genetically engineering natural viruses to make them more transmissible - writing in November that "If SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab to cause the pandemic, it will become critical to understand the chain of events and prevent this from happening again."

According to Sam Armtrong, China expert with the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, "The global public has a right to know exactly what was going on prior to the emergence of this deadly pandemic. The question cannot be shirked."

And as Edward Lucas writes via the Mail, "All the evidence points to cover-up...(but the truth can't be hidden for ever):

*  *  *

Secrets, lies and thuggery are the hallmark of the Chinese Communist regime. And in the mystery of the devastating Wuhan virus, all three are combined.

The strongest evidence of a crime is a cover-up. And the Chinese authorities have provided that.

They have fought ferociously to prevent an international inquiry into the pandemic’s origins.

Their repeated obstruction of the World Health Organisation’s fact-finding missions has provoked even that notoriously supine body to protest.

Even now, WHO investigators are being prevented from accessing the vitally important laboratory in Wuhan that is likely to be at the heart of America’s allegations.

Experts have been questioning the Chinese authorities’ account of events for a year. Now, it appears, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is to make a direct accusation.

Was it really pure chance the virus first attacked the human race in the only city in China with a research lab specialising in manipulating the world’s most dangerous viruses?

That would be as odd as a new disease emerging in the surroundings of Britain’s top-secret biological defence research establishment of Porton Down in Wiltshire.

To this day, scientists who support the theory that the virus is a mutation that emerged from Wuhan’s ‘wet market’ have not been able to find a convincing candidate for the animal in which this mutation actually occurred.

The official explanation is the new virus was 96 percent identical to a bat virus, RaTG13, found in Yunnan province in southern China.

But as Chinese professor Botao Xiao pointed out in a paper in February, no such bats are sold at the city’s markets. And the caves where they live are hundreds of miles away.

That paper disappeared from the internet. Mr Xiao — perhaps mindful of the fate that awaits those in China who promote inconvenient truths — disavowed it.

Many scientists privately assumed an engineered virus released via a laboratory accident was at least as likely as the idea of a series of stunningly unfortunate chance mutations.

After all, Shi Zhengli, the Chinese scientist nicknamed ‘Bat Woman’ was a regular visitor to those caves. When news of the outbreak broke, she initially feared that a leak from her research institute was to blame.

That thought alone should have prompted a full-scale and searching inquiry. Instead, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a diktat: ‘Any paper that traces the origin of the virus must be strictly and tightly managed.’

But even the Chinese regime cannot hold back the truth forever. Over the past twelve months independent research, official leaks and news reports have strengthened the lab-leak hypothesis.

In February a Taiwanese professor, Fang Chi-tai, highlighted a curious feature of the virus’s genetic code, which would make it more effective in attacking targeted cells. This was unlikely to be the result of a natural mutation, he suggested.

Much scientific research involves modifying viruses to understand how they function. Many observers have worried for years that the risks of such experiments are not properly thought through.

Lab safety procedures are riddled with potential loopholes and flaws: breakages, animal bites, faulty equipment or simple mis-labelling can all lead to a deadly pathogen reaching its first human victim. If so, such carelessness has now cost tens of millions of lives.

Yet we should be clear. The Chinese authorities are ruthless. But even they would not unleash a global plague.

Only in the fevered imagination of conspiracy theorists is Beijing deliberately waging biological warfare on the West.

Paradoxically, such speculation — promoted by among others President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon — may have hampered the search for the truth, by making the lab-release theory seem racist and politically toxic.

In February, in Britain’s politically correct medical journal, the Lancet, scientists published an open letter denouncing ‘conspiracy theories and rumours’, urging solidarity with Chinese colleagues.

Yet it was just those colleagues who were bearing the brunt of the regime’s frantic attempts to censor the truth about the outbreak.

The Chinese regime prizes self-preservation above all — certainly over the truth, or the health of its own people, let alone the lives of foreigners.

#Covid-19 #CovidVirus #WuhanVirus #Covid19 #Virus #Covid

 

Without Freedom Of Speech, What Is Going To Happen To America?

Thank god there are still people like Michael Snyder below capable of reason. But clearly, the downfall of America is accelerating and with it, it's the whole concept of individual freedom which is at risk. It could well be that the Chinese were right all along in the end!

 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

It is quite ironic that many of those that are always telling us that we need “diversity” in our society are also some of the strongest voices against a “diversity of viewpoints” on social media.  The founders of this nation wanted to make sure that nobody would ever take the right to freedom of speech away from us, and that is why it was enshrined in the Bill of Rights.  Unfortunately, courts have greatly eroded that right over the last several decades, and now we are facing an all-out assault on freedom of speech that is unlike anything that we have ever seen before.  And once freedom of speech is completely gone, all of our other rights will soon follow, because there will no longer be any way to defend them.

When the United States was established, government was really the only major threat to free speech.  In early America, corporations were severely limited in size and scope, and that is because our founders were determined not to let them get too big or too powerful.

Our founders knew that enormous concentrations of money and power would be great threats to freedom, and that has definitely turned out to be the case.

In the old days, if you wanted to express yourself you could grab a soapbox and head down to a local street corner.  The reason why we use the term “marketplace of ideas” today is because people literally used to gather in marketplaces and town squares and exchange ideas with one another.

In our time, the Internet has become the place where we all gather to exchange ideas, but unfortunately control of all of the most important gathering spaces is in the hands of a very small group of colossal tech corporations.

When Facebook, Twitter and others were first growing, they generally allowed people to say pretty much what they wanted to say, and information flowed pretty freely.

But censorship has escalated dramatically over the past four years, and it reached a crescendo the other day when Twitter announced that it would be permanently suspending President Trump’s account.

How would our founders feel about that?

Tech giants such as Facebook and Twitter now have more money than many entire countries do, and in many ways they also have the same level of power that many national governments possess.

Just think about this – President Trump could never take away your ability to express yourself, but Facebook and Twitter can.

Of course big corporations dominate just about every other aspect of our society as well.  These collectivist institutions have become extremely dangerous, and they are really starting to throw their weight around.

Until the power of the big corporations is addressed, we will never have a truly free society again.

Just like leftist governments, big corporations seek to gather as much money and as much power under a single umbrella as possible.

Our founders wanted to empower the individual, and that is why they wanted to limit the size of government and that is why they also wanted to limit the size of corporations.

Sadly, it wasn’t just President Trump that got booted off Twitter in recent days.  Hordes of conservative accounts have been wiped out, and this has led many to use the word “purge” to describe what has been happening.

On my Twitter account, I have literally lost more than a thousand followers in just a few days.  Others have lost a lot more.

Many conservatives have been fleeing to Parler, but over the past several days the big tech giants teamed up to take that entire platform down…

Parler will likely go offline for “a while” Sunday evening given Amazon Web Services’ decision to suspend the upstart social media platform after Wednesday’s U.S. Capitol riot, executives said Sunday.

“We are clearly being singled out,” Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff told “Fox & Friends Weekend” one day after Apple suspended Parler from its App Store even as it surged to the No. 1 spot in the free apps section earlier in the day.

I was absolutely stunned when I heard that had happened.

These people are not playing games.

For the moment, Gab.com is still up, and their traffic has surged more than 750 percent in just the last few days…

Gab.com, the free speech friendly social network, says traffic has increased by more than 750 percent in the past few days, following the blacklisting of President Donald Trump from most mainstream tech platforms.

“Our traffic is up 753% in the past 24 hours. Tens of millions of visits,” said Gab in response to a question about slow loading speeds.

But how long will it be before Gab is taken down as well?

The big tech companies don’t want diversity, they don’t want competition and they don’t want dissent.

What they want is complete and total domination.

Cancel culture is not good for our society.  If everyone with viewpoints that are not “politically correct” is eventually “canceled” we will have a society that looks a whole lot like communist China.

And I suppose that is precisely what a lot of people out there truly want.

It is not always easy to listen to viewpoints that you consider to be offensive.  Personally, I do not like most of what my fellow citizens are saying in 2021.

But in the United States we are not supposed to silence opposing viewpoints that we do not like.  Instead, we are supposed to strive for victory in the marketplace of ideas by showing that our viewpoints are better.

Unfortunately, the big tech companies have decided that millions of Americans should no longer be allowed to participate in the marketplace of ideas because their viewpoints are just too offensive.

Ironically, many of those that are doing the censoring have the most offensive and the most dangerous viewpoints of all.

Needless to say, if we stay on the path that we are currently on there is no future for America.

Without free speech, the system of government that our founders established simply won’t work.

What is the point of even having elections if we can only express one point of view?

In China, no dissent is allowed and one political party runs everything on a permanent basis.

America appears to be heading in the same direction, and there are millions of people in this country that are actually quite thrilled that this is happening.

Here's an interesting report of the electric "disturbance" that just took place in France at the beginning of 2021.

In our short span attention society, there are still decisions with long term consequences, one of which concerns energy.

Carbon may or may not be a long term risk for mankind (I believe the case is not as clear-cut as usually presented.) but the consequences of misleaded decisions will be with us for decades to come. 

The wind and solar paranoia currently running amok in the West is one of them. For technical reasons, you simply cannot run a modern electrical grid on wind and solar alone since the base load cannot be guarantied at night and especially in winter as will be demonstrated in the coming years.

One of the main factors differentiating developed and developing countries over the last 50 years has been a stable electric supply as you cannot run a modern economy on an unreliable electric network. 

The fact that in the US and now in Europe, electricity blackouts are becoming more common is to my opinion an ominous sign of things to come.

What we are facing currently, more than anything, is an energy crisis for which there is no simple solutions. Diminishing returns on investment in the energy sector guaranty that the coming decades will be harsh, short of a very unlikely technical breakthrough in fusion at ITER. This will be compounded by wasteful decisions to over-invest in expensive and unreliable energy sources for which there is no turning back as the trillions of dollars currently wasted on fanciful projects will not be available when needed.

Stay tuned... and prepare!

Near electricity blackout over Europe was triggered in France due to "Polar Cold Wave"

P Gosselin
No Tricks Zone
Tue, 12 Jan 2021

 

A further analysis of last Friday's European near power blackout shows that the problem had begun already one day earlier in France, due to cold weather, says a German expert.

At wind energy protest group Vernunftkraft Bayern, Jörn Künzle provides background on what was behind Europe's near blackout last Friday, January 8, 2021.

Disturbance began in France

Quoting energy expert Dr. Michael Schneeberger, "The disturbance in the European grid was triggered in France. Already on January 7, France's RTE (Le Réseau de Transport de l'Électricité) was forced to take essential parts of the electricity-intensive industry off the power grid. The RED alert level was ordered for the entire network of France."

Polar wave

The following reasons were decisive, according to Michael Schneeberger's research:

1) The polar cold wave occurred earlier than meteorologically expected, with low temperatures for France.

2) Due to delays for new rules by the corona management, 13 nuclear power plants are currently not on the grid.

3) Despite fierce EDF warnings, the Macron government (German influence, Merkel/Greens) shut down the 2 Fessenheim units (both fully operational, i.e. almost 2 GW thus additionally missing).

4) CONSEQUENCE: Therefore, beginning Thursday, power had to be imported massively at very high prices,
a) with continental high pressure situation, there is no wind (and this in whole Europe),
b) with an installed capacity of 57 GW wind energy, the available capacity was less than 1000 MW (as is well known, there is little sun even in January / ignored by politics).

5) So on January 8, the RTE called on the French population to switch off electrical devices, heaters and charging units, but that, however, was not continuously adhered to.

6) Therefore the only remaining possibility was to intervene using area-wide shutdowns or by lowering the mains voltage by approx. 5% (there has been no comparable situation in France in 60 years).

7) Germany was unable to offer any assistance, that was the trigger for a separation of the European grids by ENTSO for stability reasons.

8) It then took a good hour to stabilize the frequency again.

9) Southern Germany. Bavaria and Austria could be kept stable, thanks to the Czech Republic grid (the Temelin and Dukovany nuclear power plants were in full operation).

Note:

1) February 2021 is still to come, with even lower temperatures.
2) Also interesting is that Poland has requested Germany to restart the nuclear power plants immediately , otherwise electricity power supply would be massively at risk.

A similar incident occurred in November, 2006 when ten million households in Western Europe had to be disconnected from the power grid.

======================================

NTZ Note:

On Saturday we posted on how wind and solar energies have been mostly AWOL over the past weeks in Germany. For the period from January 6 to 9, we see that Germany's massive 110 GW of installed wind and solar capacity were delivering near nothing, thus straining the grid in these times of cold weather.

Are You Ready For Total (Ideological) War?

I too shall repent or abscond from this second coming of dark ages...

Authored (somewhat satirically) by C.J.Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

So, welcome to 2021! If last week was any indication, it is going to be quite an exciting year. It is going to be the year in which GloboCap reminds everyone who is actually in charge and restores “normality” throughout the world, or at least attempts to restore “normality,” or the “New Normality,” or the “Great Normal Reset,” or “The New Normal War on Domestic Terror” … or whatever they eventually decide to call it.

In any event, whatever they call it, GloboCap is done playing grab-ass. They have had it with all this “populism” malarkey that has been going on for the last four years. Yes, that’s right, the party is over, you Russian-backed white supremacist terrorists! You Trump-loving, anti-mask grandmother killers! You anti-vax, election-fraud-conspiracy theorists! You deviants who refuse to follow orders, wear your damn masks, vote for who they tell you, and believe whatever completely nonsensical official propaganda they pour into your heads!

Oh, yes, you really did it this time! You stormed the goddamned US Capitol. You and your racist, Russia-backed army of bison-hat wearing half-naked actors have meddled with the primal forces of GloboCap, and now, by God, you will atone! No, do not try to minimize your crimes. You entered a building without permission! The building where America simulates democracy! You walked around in there waving silly flags! You went into the Chamber, into people’s offices! One of you actually put his filthy populist feet up on Pelosi’s desk … ON HER DESK! This aggression will not stand!

OK, before I go any further with this essay, I need to explain to my regular readers (in case it wasn’t already clear) that I’ve decided to forswear every word I’ve ever written, and all my principles, and my common sense, and join the remainder of my old leftist and liberal friends in the orgy of online hate and outrage they are currently mindlessly indulging in.

Yes, I realize this comes as a shock, but I have seen the GloboCap writing on the wall, and I don’t want to … you know, get ideologically “cleansed,” or charged with “extremism,” or “insurrectionism,” or “domestic terrorism,” or “populism,” or whatever. I’m already in enough trouble as it is for not playing ball with their “apocalyptic plague,” and whatever else I am, I am certainly no martyr, and I have a career in the arts to consider, so I have decided to listen to my inner coward and join the goose-stepping global-capitalist mob, which is why this column sounds slightly out of character.

See, back in the old days, before my conversion, I would have made fun of my liberal friends for calling this “storming” of the Capitol a “coup,” or an “insurrection,” and for demanding that the protesters be prosecuted as “domestic terrorists.” I probably would have scolded them a bit for taking to the Internet and spewing their hatred at the unarmed woman shot dead by the police like a pack of soulless, totalitarian jackals. I might have even made a reference to that infamous scene in Schindler’s List where the crowd of “normal” German citizens all laugh and jeer as the Jews are marched away to the ghetto by the Nazi goons.

But, now that I have seen the light, I see how bad and wrong that would have been. Clearly, trespassing in the US Capitol is a crime that should be punishable by death. And comparing contemporary American liberals to the “good Germans” during the Nazi era is so outrageous that … well, it should probably be censored. So, good thing I decided not to do that! Plus, the woman was a “devoted conspiracy theorist,” so she got what she deserved, right? (“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” was the official liberal shibboleth, I believe.)

In fact (and I hope my liberal friends are still reading this), the police should have shot the entire lot of them! All these Russian-backed Nazi insurrectionists should have been gunned down right there on the spot, preferably by muscle-bound corporate mercenaries and CIA snipers in Black Hawk helicopters with big Facebook and Twitter logos on them! Actually, anyone who trespassed in the Capitol Building (which is like a cathedral), or just came to the protest wearing a MAGA hat, should be hunted down by federal authorities, charged as a “domestic white-supremacist terrorist,” frog-marched out onto Black Lives Matter Plaza, and shot, in the face, live, on TV, so that everyone can watch and howl at their screens like the Two Minutes Hate in 1984. That would teach these “insurrectionists” a lesson!

Or they could shoot them in one of those corporate-branded stadiums! We could make it a weekly televised event. It’s not like there is any shortage of Trump-supporting “domestic terrorists.” They could use a different stadium every week, deck the place out with big “New Normal” banners, play music, make speeches, the whole nine yards. Everyone would have to wear masks, of course, and strictly adhere to social distancing. Folks could bring the kids, make a day of it.

How am I doing so far, leftist and liberal friends? No? Not fanatical and hateful enough?

OK, so what is it going to take to convince you that I have changed my tune, got my mind right, and am totally on board with the New Normal totalitarianism?

Trump?

Sure, I can do Trump. I hate him! He’s Hitler! He’s Russian Hitler! He’s Russian White Supremacist Hitler! Yes, I know I’ve spent the last four years pointing out that he isn’t actually Hitler, or a Russian agent, and that he’s really just the same ridiculous, narcissistic ass clown that he has always been, but I was wrong. He’s definitely Hitler, and a Russian agent! He is certainly not just a pathetic old huckster without a single powerful ally in Washington who could not stage an actual coup if Putin nuked every blue state on the map.

No, I soil myself in fear before his awesome power. Never mind that he’s just been banned by Facebook, Twitter, and numerous other corporate platforms, and made a fool of by the corporate media, the international political establishment, the Intelligence agencies, and the rest of GloboCap since the day he took the oath of office. Forget the fact that, although he holds the nuclear launch codes in his tiny little hands and is Commander in Chief of the US military, the most he could do to challenge his removal was file a buttload of hopeless lawsuits and sit around in the Oval Office eating cheeseburgers and tweeting into the night. No, none of that means a thing, not when he still has the power to “embolden” a few dozen pissed-off Americans to storm (or calmly walk) into the Capitol and take selfies sitting in the Vice President’s Chair!

Look, the point is, I hate him. And I hate his supporters. I hate everyone who doesn’t hate him and his supporters. I hate everyone who won’t wear a mask. I hate the Republicans. I hate the Russians. I hate everyone who won’t get the vaccine. My God do I hate them! I am so full of hatred and mindless rage that it is making me crazy. I am so consumed with self-righteous hatred, propaganda, and manufactured hysteria that, if Rachel Maddow, or Chris Hayes, or whoever, told me that it was time to round them all up, these “domestic terrorists,” these “insurrectionists,” these “conspiracy theorists,” these “anti-mask extremists” (and anyone else who won’t obey us), and put them on trains and send them to camps, I’d probably be OK with that.

How am I doing, liberals? Am I back in the club? Because, I get it. I swear! I’m cured! Praise God! I’m ready to pitch in and do my part. I believe in GloboCap’s final victory! I’m willing to work, if our leaders order me, ten, twelve, or fourteen hours a day, and give all I have for GloboCap victory! I am ready for total ideological war … an ideological war more total and radical than anything I can even imagine!

Sure, our imaginary enemies are formidable (and this war will probably last forever … or at least until the end of global capitalism), but, in the words of one our greatest liberal heroes, George W. Bush, “bring it on!”

"2021: If It Wasn't For Bad Luck, We Wouldn't Have No Luck At All!"

 

  2021: If It Wasn't For Bad Luck, We Wouldn't Have No Luck At All

January 11, 2021

If we have indeed begun a sustained "reversal of fortune", it might be prudent to consider the possibility we're only in the first inning of a sustained run of back luck.

In our self-deluded hubris, we reckon we've moved beyond the influence of fortune, a.k.a. Lady Luck: our technologies are so powerful and our monetary policies so godlike that nothing as random as luck could ever crush our limitless expansion.

Thus does hubris beg for a comeuppance: the greater the hubris, the greater the reversal of fortune, the greater the confidence in our godlike powers, the greater the collapse of our prideful faith in technology and economic policies.

So we've enshrined our hubris-soaked happy story: the virus will naturally weaken, vaccines will conquer the Covid virus in short order, and by opening the monetary spigots and flooding the global economy with trillions in newly created currencies, we'll unleash the greatest boom in history, because it's so righteously "green."

We seem to have forgotten that to elicit a laugh, tell God your plans. We confused a sustained run of good fortune with godlike powers that are impervious to mere luck.

Unfortunately for all the true believers in our vaunted technology and human agencies, luck still matters, and after 50+ years of under-appreciated, fabulously good fortune, we're in the first at-bat of a sustained reversal of fortune, for as noted here many times, the way of the Tao is reversal: good luck doesn't last forever, nor is it some birthright of technologically advanced civilizations.

Are we ill-prepared for seven lean years of increasingly bad luck? Absolutely. Whatever technology can't resolve, trillions in newly issued currency will: either the magic of technology will work miracles, or the magic of limitless free money will work whatever miracles are left after technology wipes up the spot of bother.

If you wanted to script an unprecedented collapse of faith in the false gods of technology and money-printing, you'd outline exactly what transpired in 2020: a reckless dismissal of the pandemic followed by a monumental financial crash that opened the floodgates of free money, which triggered a massive "recovery" rally in risk assets, driving gamblers' confidence to new heights of fantasy.

All hail our new secular gods, the Federal Reserve, the most powerful force in the Universe!

Then you'd release miraculous vaccines that promised a permanent resolution to the pandemic and a measured return to the carefree pre-pandemic orgy of debt-based consumption. (Never mind the doubts of some experts about the vaccine protocols: Covid-19 Vaccine Protocols Reveal That Trials Are Designed To Succeed (Forbes.com) by William A. Haseltine)

Then you'd script the opening inning of the tragi-comedy unfolding in 2021: rather than fading as so many were pleased to confidently predict, the Covid virus has made remarkable gains in function, becoming more contagious and more elusive as multiple variants emerge globally.

Rather than conquering the virus, we're unable to even keep pace. The variant ravaging Britain was finally identified in late December, and subsequent sequencing of previously collected samples indicates that it emerged (or arrived) in September. In the meantime, this variant (and other mutations with similar characteristics) have spread around the world with business travelers, tourists, etc. One or more of these variants may reduce the efficacy of the much-hyped vaccines. It's all in this report from the New York Times:

As Coronavirus Mutates, the World Stumbles Again to Respond (New York Times)

Everything that was supposed to work smoothly due to our oh-so-advanced technological and administrative prowess in now either in doubt or in shambles. Consider the potential for less than 95% efficacy in the vaccines due to the interactions and mutually reinforcing dynamics of 1) vaccine hesitancy in those who understand the conventional processes of testing vaccines best, i.e. healthcare professionals; 2) the potential for consequential numbers of those who receive the first shot of vaccine failing to come back for the second shot due to unpleasant experiences after the first shot or other conditions such as being overworked, evicted, etc., and 3) variants further reducing the efficacy of the vaccines in unpredictable ways.

So let's say the efficacy drops from the promised 95% to 65%. Are you in the 2/3 camp who are protected by the vaccine from serious illness (though you may be a carrier and infect others, a possibility that was not tested by the trials protocols), or are you in the 1/3 camp who for whatever reason is no longer protected by the vaccine?

Since we're chasing a fast-mutating virus, there may not be a fast, accurate way to identify who's fully protected and who isn't. Since this may be unknowable, everyone will have to continue the behavioral methods of limiting exposure and transmission of the virus. In which case the vaccines will have accomplished very little in terms of returning the world to the pre-pandemic glory days of 2019.

If we have indeed begun a sustained reversal of fortune, it might be prudent to consider the possibility we're only in the first inning of a sustained run of back luck. We might want to consider learning a new theme song for 2021, Albert King's Born Under a Bad Sign (composed by Booker T. Jones and William Bell): "If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all."

The cycles of human history are amenable to a reversal of fortune: please consider historian Peter Turchin's three indicators of systemic disorder: check, check and check.

Suppressing discussions about the potentially lavish banquet of consequences set by a reversal of fortune won't actually change the outcome of the next eight innings, it will only serve to increase the odds of catastrophically consequential decisions being made by those at the top of the hubris-heap.

There is No Algorithm for Truth by Tom Scott (Video)

A long but rather profound talk about the Internet and the search for truth. 

The news at the beginning of 2021 is that for the first time, the big Internet platforms have shown us that they are more powerful than the President of the United States. This is an amazing development and maybe the most potent one to date. 

As the end of the talk makes clear, avoiding the two extremes of the "Nazi Bar" which promotes extreme views and the "Echo Chamber" which forbids everything you disagree with is a very complex dilemma with no clear solution. I empathize with this view. 

But there is also a deeper risk in that the truth almost always starts as fringe or what we call today "conspiracy theory". If that was not the case, there would be no "discovery" and no paradigm would ever be overturned. In plain words: If we censure everything that deviates from accepted wisdom and "truth", we also kill off the Galileos, Newtons and Einsteins.   

This is the long term risk. There is also a much more immediate and ominous risk in giving too much control to these companies which is guarantied to be abused in their quest for power.

It may well be already too late. but the fact that 2021 starts with such a bang as the banning of the President of the United States is a good reminder of the risks ahead.

 

The risk of a RNA vaccine are significant (Video)

 

Although this video has been widely condemned as fringe and anti-vaccine, this is, to my opinion, absolutely not the case.

The participants are well known biologists highlighting a major flaw of RNA vaccination for which there is to this day no clear answer. So their question: "Is the risk worth the benefit?" is extremely relevant and should not be removed from the public domain.

Already several high profile doctors have died following Covid vaccine injection so sooner than later this discussion will be back in the limelight. It is unavoidable.

 

 This video is not available on YouTube so you need to click on the link below to access it.
https://video.wakkeren.nl/videos/watch/9bd9f602-e5e9-47e0-b35d-8f1bfd78f0f4

Lockdown 3.0 in the UK!

 Rushing into 1984 with 79% approval! 

Did the Romans saw it coming too? 

Is decadence unavoidable at this stage?

 

 

Rowan Atkinson on Cancel Culture...

Too few, too little, too late...

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Rowan Atkinson, famous for portraying the characters Mr Bean and Blackadder, has once again hit headlines for slamming the rise of a destructive cancel culture.

In an interview with the UK’s Radio Times, Atkinson described online trolls trying to ban everything as “the digital equivalent of the medieval mob.”

“The problem we have online is that an algorithm decides what we want to see, which ends up creating a simplistic, binary view of society,” he said.

“It becomes a case of either you’re with us or against us. And if you’re against us, you deserve to be ‘cancelled’,” the British comedian emphasised.

Atkinson also blasted social media, saying that it fills him with “fear about the future,” because it continues to lower tolerance for differing opinions, which widens divisions in society.

“What we have now is the digital equivalent of the medieval mob roaming the streets looking for someone to burn,” Atkinson urged.

He noted that he has been on the end of the hate mob, not only owing to some of the skits in Mr Bean, many of which were written 30 years ago, but also because of his long history of standing up for free speech.

“It is scary for anyone who’s a victim of that mob and it fills me with fear about the future,” Atkinson declared.

Atkinson opposed the introduction of so called ‘hate speech’ laws in 2005, describing the legislation as like taking “sledgehammer to crack a nut”.

Atkinson also opposed the introduction of homophobic ‘hate speech’ clauses into UK law in 2009.

At the time in 2009, Atkinson outlined where such moves to quell speech were heading, prophesising “a culture of censoriousness, a questioning, negative and leaden attitude that is encouraged by legislation of this nature.”

The comedian warned that it would only be “considerably and meaningfully alleviated by [a] free speech clause.”

In 2012, Atkinson further railed against “insulting” behaviour being classed as a criminal offence.

“The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult,” Atkinson stated at the time during an impassioned defence of free speech:

In 2020, Atkinson was again targeted by the mob he speaks about when he publicly opposed Scotland’s ‘hate crimes’ bill, saying that it “risked stifling freedom of expression, and the ability to articulate or criticise religious and other beliefs”.

Several other comedians have railed against the rise of cancel culture, including Monty Python star John Cleese, The Office creator Ricky Gervais, the ‘podfathers’ Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla, as well as Bill Burr and ‘politically incorrect’ star Dave Chapelle, to name just a few.

Cancel culture has seen some comedians self-censoring in order to appease the mob:

Comedy is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to cancel culture, however. There are signs that its tentacles are penetrating deeply into all aspects of society.

A recent study by leading education focused think tank Civitas revealed that free speech at the world’s leading universities is being eroded at an alarming rate.

The study found that within the past three years, more than 68 per cent of universities in the UK have seen free speech severely restricted, with academics unable to meaningfully discuss the nuances of issues such as race and gender.

The report notes that universities including Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews, three of the world’s premiere institutions are among those that have fallen into a “red” category for free speech following instances of “no platforming” of scheduled speakers.

Last year, 150 of the world’s top intellectuals, authors and activists signed an open letter decrying leftist cancel culture, censorship and the totalitarian march of “ideological conformity.”

The letter warned that cancel culture is creating a climate of risk aversion that is preventing anyone from dissenting from the monolithic consensus of social justice rhetoric, creating a “stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time.”

In the US, the Deputy Secretary of The Department of Homeland Security also recently warned that the actions of tech companies in embracing cancel culture, and censoring opinions they do not agree with constitutes a “grave threat to national security.”

Covid-19 is a social catastrophe!

 There is little more to say than what is already in this article.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,

As a naturally optimistic person, it vexes me that the word catastrophe has echoed in my mind since early March 2020. It’s the word the great smallpox eradicator Donald Henderson used in his 2006 prediction of the consequences of lockdown, a word that wasn’t around then. His masterful article addressed the idea of travel restrictions, forced human separation, business and school closings, mask mandates, limits on public gatherings, quarantines, and the entire litany of brutality to which we’ve been subjected for nearly a year, all summed up in the word lockdown. 

Dr. Henderson warned against it all. This is not how you deal with disease, he said; at a minimum society needs to function so that medical professionals can do their work. Diseases are managed one person at a time, not with grand central plans. That was the old wisdom in any case. Under the influence of vainglorious modelers, ideological resetters, and politicians hoping to make names for themselves, most of the world tried the lockdown experiment anyway. 

Here we are nearly a year since I wrote my first article warning that governments presumed themselves to possess the quarantine power. They could use it if they wanted to. I didn’t expect they would. I wrote this piece as a “for your information” public service just to let people know how terrible governments could be. 

I had no idea that quarantines would be only the beginning. At this point we know what we did not know then. They are capable – by they I mean even governments in presumably civilized countries with functioning democracies – of the unthinkable, and they are capable of persisting in the unthinkable for an appalling amount of time. 

Now the lockdowns are our life in the US, unless you are lucky enough to live in Florida, Georgia, South Dakota, South Carolina, and perhaps a few other places. Here in these outposts of what we used to call civilization, life seems normal. Our readers in these states don’t even think about the virus much, and they read my articles and find them overwrought, like I’m describing life on another planet. 

The US seems to have two economies, one open and one closed. You see the difference on social media: people at the beach, malls, living life more or less normally. Meanwhile, in the lockdown states, businesses are shuttered, people are demoralized, fights over masks are breaking out in stores, the arts are wrecked, and multitudes are still cowering in their homes. The unemployment differences between the two reveal exactly what’s going on. 

We are experiencing what is a migratory demographic shift that could compare to 19th century legend. From what is being reported by U-Haul and other moving companies, people are fleeing from closed to open. Reports United Van Lines: “Among the top inbound states were South Carolina (64%), Oregon (63%), South Dakota (62%) and Arizona (62%), while New York (67%), Illinois (67%), Connecticut (63%) and California (59%) were among the states experiencing the largest exoduses.” And this all happened since the summer when it became unbearably obvious that the bastards were not going to stop tormenting their people. 

Moving, however, is not a panacea. Normal life seems to be breaking down. The government mails are running 2 to 3 weeks behind. Companies can’t even close their books because the tempo of life has dragged to a crawl. Tech support takes many hours on hold. Accountability for failure to deliver on services seems to be evaporating. Groceries experience sporadic shortages in unpredictable ways. We no longer know the rules and yet fear breaking them. 

Health care is not functioning normally, with non-Covid patients hurled out too soon while positive tests land you in ICU whether you need it or not. (My own 81-year-old mother was hospitalized with a serious condition and then thrown out because she didn’t test positive for SARS-CoV-2). Vaccine administration has been mostly chaos because society is not functioning normally. Weddings and funerals are still out. We are being socialized to treat everyone, including ourselves, as nothing but pathogenic disease vectors. 

The hatred and threats of violence in online venues are out of control. Society has never been more angry or divided in my lived experience. Tech giants are still censoring dissent, trying to force everyone to believe the pronouncements from the World Health Organization even though they change week to week, as if they are working hard to realize Orwell’s vision of the future. The blue check marks and people with access daily advocate trampling on the rights of those who can’t live their lives online. 

The mainstream media that most people once trusted continues to pretend as if this catastrophe is a result of the pandemic rather than the pandemic response. Just look at the number of headlines that begin “Pandemic Has Caused….” and then fill in the blank with any one of the many terrible things happening now: a third of restaurants bankrupt, opioid deaths, alcoholism, suicide ideation, female unemployment, demoralized and abused children missing a whole year of schooling, loved ones separated by borders, murder rates soaring, vaccinations missed, cancer screenings forgone, and so on. It’s all the pandemic, they say. 

Why won’t the media name the lockdowns as the culprit? It’s not just denialism. The implication is that we had no choice but to shatter life as we know it. Lockdown is just what one does in a pandemic. It’s utterly not. Nothing like this has ever taken place, never in history. This remains an egregious attack on fundamental rights, liberties, and the rule of law. The results are all around us. That the news media refuses to name the reason feels like gaslighting, except that we know they are lying, they know they are lying, and they know that we know they are lying. It’s just an unwritten rule in journalism now: never name the lockdowns (unless you bury it in the 13th paragraph of an otherwise boring article). 

And even after a full year, the public remains mostly deeply ignorant of the age/health gradient of Covid-19 fatalities, even though we’ve known this since February of last year! According to the CDC – even conceding the accuracy of testing and exigencies of fatality classification – it’s 99.997% for 0-19 years, 99.98% for 20-49 years, 99.5% for 50-69 years, and 94.6% for 70+ years. It’s nursing homes that have been a main vector for disease outcomes. The threat to school-age kids approaches zero. The more information we get the more normalized the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen seems, a respiratory and flu-like illness we have seen become pandemic before it became endemic just like another dozen times in the last hundred years. We didn’t shut down society, and, for that reason, we managed them just fine. 

Is it that numbers like the above are just too abstract to mean anything to people? More likely, the numbers mean something but that meaning is overwhelmed by the nonstop panic porn one sees on the media each day. People can no longer distinguish these various terms that media pundits throw around to signal how terrible this disease is: outbreaks, cases, outcomes, deaths, spread, infection rates, hospitalizations – it’s just a huge and blurry blizzard of terrible. 

Citing a bit of reality-based data cannot make a dent in the pathological Munchausen Syndrome that has been unleashed. Primal fear has swamped rationality for the better part of 10 months. So people douse themselves in sanitizer for fear of the enemy they cannot see, and presume everyone else is trying to infect them. They put up with attacks on their rights under the belief that it is for their own good. 

The fiscal and monetary policy response has been equally egregious, all premised on the idea that money printing and spending – it all goes together these days – can possibly be a substitute for private investment and actual people buying and selling things. That combined with continued protectionist measures in the last days of the Trump administration make for the worst combination of policy malpractice in generations, or perhaps ever. The pain of recovery will be monstrous. 

Many of us spend a good part of our days poring over the latest research, which reveals their terrible toll of the lockdowns, the inescapable horror that it is the lockdowns not the pandemic that has done this. It shows the absence of any relationship between lockdowns and lives saved. It shows that a significant number of excess deaths are due not to disease but to drug overdoses, depression, and suicide. It shows the tremendous problems with PCR testing, the nondriver of “asymptomatic transmission,” the incredible proliferation of disease misclassification, and the absurdity of the idea that political solutions can intimidate and arrest a virus. 

We do all this research every day, and then turn on the TV to find the nation’s top medical spokesman (a certain Dr. Fauci of fame and fortune) knows nothing and cares nothing for any of the research. He is a performance artist who just likes being on TV, being fawned over while he advocates the permanent overthrow of our rights and liberties. And yet even his colleagues and others in the profession, who know his long-running racket very well, dare not call him out for fear of losing grant money, being ostracized within their institutions, and trolled on Twitter. He is a scary man with the power to make or break careers, so rather than take the risk, others just shake their heads and turn the channel.

Sheer cowardice explains most of the dearth of dissent. It’s easy to forget how cravenly careerist people become when they are afraid. Most people would rather lie or be silent than risk facing disapproval of friends and colleagues. Cancel culture makes this worse. Doctors who dare talk about natural immunities or the talisman of masks and distancing find themselves investigated by medical boards. Academics who speak out are accused of encouraging superspreaders, blasted by colleagues including students. It’s way beyond witch hunts at this point. As a result, you can easily get the impression that everyone agrees with the desperate need to dismantle civilization as we know it. 

None of this is sustainable. When it was “14 days to flatten the curve,” I feared for the future of investment, public confidence in government, lost revenue for small and medium-sized businesses, and their permanent shock that would come from the realization that government can and will do something this horrible. Another two weeks went by and we were writing furiously to warn the world of the deadly consequences of this course. April 13 came and AIER released the most strongly worded editorial then in print: we need complete liberation now. The Wall Street Journal followed and said the same two days later. 

In those days, the prevailing theory of the virus was that you cannot stop it but you can slow it down. Tall or short, the area of the curve is the same. Why prolong the pain? The talking point at the time was to preserve hospital capacity. But over time, this plausible idea mutated into a full suppressionist agenda. Slow the spread became stop the spread. It was a small step until the “experts” defaulted to a medieval view of disease: run away! Actually, that’s too flattering: it was a gradeschool view of cooties that became the new and thoroughly fake science. 

Then we arrived at the current moment in which professional virus fighters, having failed miserably to suppress the virus, have turned against the public, blaming those who do not comply with complete enthusiasm. Fauci says some version of this daily on TV: if everyone would just comply, we won’t have to lock down anymore. Unless morale improves, the beatings will continue. 

After two weeks, there was still time to undo major parts of the damage of lockdowns. After 10 months, not so much. There will be loss of life for many years to come plus population-wide psychological, social, and economic damage. The catastrophe has not been averted. It is far worse than any of us could ever have imagined at this time last year. The world has shifted and drastically, and the pain and suffering are unspeakable. Our governments are the pathogens that have done this to us. They were aided and abetted by fake news, fake experts, fake intellectuals, fake science, and a fake view of life. 

At this late date, we’ve lost confidence in most of what we used to trust and think was normal. Despair is taking over. Many of those who were willing to fight in the spring and summer have given up, tired of writing, tired of protesting, tired of yelling. The attempt to demotivate the opposition is working. This is a huge error. 

What, then, is the path to the future? We can stay on the present catastrophic course or we can reverse it. The sooner governments wise up and stop hurting everyone like this the sooner the healing can begin. It will take years, decades, but a version of the rule of medicine from the ancient days pertains: first stop doing harm.