Grammar-school children watching a chess game think the boring quiet player must be losing to loudmouth opponent because he doesn’t reveal what he’s thinking.

I’ve been revising my personal Ukraine “narrative”. I still think it’s a recent avatar of a long-standing ethnic conflict between Russians and Poles/Westerners, but I now think that the violence might be fomented and used by the real power behind the throne, Kolomoisky, who also seeems to be willing to help the west along as long as he’s given a somewhat free hand.

Something to try on for size: Kolomoisky is a Ukro-Jewish mafioso, who hires out Azov fascists as muscle to enforce his power. This changes the picture from ethnic violence motivated mostly by political fanaticism, to thuggery motivated by enforcement of K’s power. In other words, the Azov battalion is a wholly owned subsidiary of Igor, whose appearance has as much to do with their embrace of violence as it does with their political inclinations. A Jew hiring fascist mercenaries might appear incongruous, but business is business.

This raises the interesting question of whether western Ukrainians will see Putin mostly as an ethnic Russian oppressor, or as someone who can deliver them from out-of-control gangsterism. With this added to the mix, Putin’s intentions become very unclear, as he might be trying to break Ukrainian oligarchs’ attachment to the west, to have some semblance of responsbility to the welfare of their own people, similar to what he himself did when he came to power in Russia and arrested the social freefall of the nineties.

K’s machinations are less clear, though undoubtedly defensive. Certainly he wants to maintain if not amass even more power. I suspect he’s doing the bidding of the Rothschilds, US, or Davos globalists, not that there’s necessarily a significant difference in their agendas, but that much of his ower derives from behind-the-scenes cooperation with these larger sharks. Could K make a deal with P?

Zelensky is just the front office boy.

I second your comments on this:

Indulging in overly-heated rhetoric, he declared “We have witnessed over the last 20 months a coup d’état against democracy, and the controlled demolition of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Overly heated? RFK hit the nail on the head. I’ve been personally trying to avoid this conclusion for quite some time, but it’s become impossible. I’m relieved that discussion is finally coming out into the open, and disapppinted that Mr. Unz is still in denial.

The loss of rights and sovereignty is a necessary part of the COVID disinformation campaaign meant to hide the discrepancies between what primary medical literature indicates on the one hand, compared with the official pronouncements shielded by the hearsay news and censorship on the other. The no-free-speech MSM has become a sophomorically one-sided bullhorn whose main function is been to suppress intellectual dissent and enforce ideological conformity.

The medical literature is replete with simple treatments for COVID that doctors have have discovered/developed, some since early 2020, which can render COVID no worse than the flu. A pervasive propaganda effort has been devoted to keep the public ignorant if not frightened of these solutions. In a concerted program official malpractice, Fauci et al. can speak any lie with a strainght face, even in Congress, and promote any coercion he pleases, secure in the knowledge that the MSM will have his back. Simple Tony says do this, and no matter how silly, compliance is expected. Consent of the governed enters not at all into this program.

Intead of asking how you can be so incurious about the censorship, cancelling, and physical oppression, Mr. Unz, I’ll ask instead, what shred of liberty is being preserved in the current operation that wasn’t smashed in the Weimar “emergency” that Hitler used to take power?

The question comes up, exactly whom is this book for?

To those sympathetic to the author, such as myself, most of what I’ve heard that’s in the book is already known. (At least I believe so; I’m waiting for my copy, if only to support RFK Jr.)

Those anatagonistic to the author will dismiss everything out-of-hand as anti-vax disinformation and falsehood.

Have the propagandists at the Trusted News Initiative left anyone undecided at this point?

Here we see how Ukraine is making Donbass & Lugansk “Safe for Democracy”. Carlson should NOT have missed the point, that Ukraine is supposed to be sitting down with D & L leaders, according to the Minsk treaty, to negotiate a “democratic” settlement.

The question to Mike Turner should have been, why are you pushing for military escalation insread of democratic settlement in Ukraine?

Out-Thought, Out-Bought, Out-Fought

To mix metaphors, there’s a steamroller in the room. Media control can deflate the best of efforts, the most convincing evidence, the worst atrocities; it can inflate trivial to the monumental and create evil from good.

In the face of blatantly unconstutional and corrupt election practices, the narrative was created that those who documented such events were spreading disinformation. When citizens peacably assembled for a redress of this grievance, the media portrayed the Stop the Steal Rally as a violent insurrection.

Even in the face of doctors’ reports of success with early outpatient treatments, the media has convinced many that the CDC’s recommendation, that inaction is an appropriate treatment for COVID until hospitalization becomes necessary, is sensible. Despite proven effective prophylactic measures, we’re to believe that only the vaccines give hope.

I know people who believe that WMD’s were found in Iraq, or that the vaccinated can’t spread COVID.

The media has unabashedly convinced many that organizations like the Trusted News Initiative or Good Information Inc., openly espousing an agenda of censorship, really will preserve democracy.

All you need to do is go to one of the “fact-checking” sites to see how convincingly lies can be proclaimed . Straw dogs, personal assassinations, and derogatory comments so easily warp perceptions of reality. Control is so easy when you have the platform.

So: the problem is not with the strategies or actions of the truth-tellers of 911 (or of American Pravda). They do provide all the properly irrefutable evidence to the public. They do target the proper audiences. They have even aroused incendiary political reactions. But healthy political reactions are being effectively snuffed out by a propaganda campaign that makes the absurd appear reasonable, that makes court malfeasance seem sensible, and that portrays political repression of our secret security organizations as protective.

Thank you for this perspective. Having encountered this thesis for the first time, I’m still early in the process of digesting the ideas. The proposed explanation for the way that Roman estates connected by open roads became fiefdoms protected by castles is worth exploring.

As for slavery, on the other hand, the authors seem to present this as a Frankish invention applied to conquered Rome. However, at least in the Gallic Wars, and likely elsewhere, the Roman MO for treating conquered enemies was to send them “under the yoke”, to enslave them. So if Frankish enslavement of conquered people hadn’t been a generally practiced policy of those times, in the particular case of Franks conquering Romans, it was at least payback.

Also, before portraying the Frankish changes as being universally for the worse, I understand that the average lifespan of a Roman slave was about 17 (pls correct if wrong), and the implied attrition required a continued supply from Roman conquests to maintain the slave population at the required levels. It’s hard to imagine that the Franks could have made the status of slaves that much worse, but then I suppose I shouldn’t underestimate man’s capacity for evil.

OMFG. Taliban needs to be accountable to nato? In wtf universe do these people live in??

Well said!

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t take any bets that the media won’t piously intone that NATO would provide a moderating democratic influence, and that NATO’s presence should be encouraged for humanitarian reasons. Nor would I take any bets that most consumers of said media won’t nod appreciatively.

Sorry for the double negatives, but they seem appropriate when NATO arrogantly tries to present their having a say in Central Asia as a positive development.

Everybody around Putin is vaccinated and so is Putin, or so he claimed. Why would he need to self-isolate; how could all these vaccinated people become sick? Is the vaccine – fake?

Well, pretty much. The vaccine was always an experimental affair after all, and unfortunately it seems to have failed. People seem to forget there’s such a thing as breakout case, but they shouldn’t be surprised when COVID erupts in vaccinated populations. Gibralter’s last wave was in a 100 % vaccinated population, and Singapore’s post-vax wave is worse than the first. After Delta, vaccine efficacy has plummeted, so it’s prudent to exercise caution if you’re in any group with memebers having a viral load, regardless of vaccine status. At this point, between the deline in efficacy between temporal decline and the appearance of Delta, and variations in one’s personal COVID hygiene, there’s no telling what anyone’s state of contagion is, vaccinated or not, except perhaps by a nasal culture.

This isn’t to say that COVID isn’t a handy cover for all sorts of things.

The Skripals are hiding out in New Zealand under assumed identities that the best Russian agents couldn’t figure out in a hundred years.

…and they lived happily ever after.

I’d call that heartwarming, wouldn’t you?

This article closes with

That someone, somewhere, somehow seems to be making an effort to isolate and delegitimize President Putin by making him an international poisoner is tragedy elevated by its absurdity to the level of farce. It serves no purpose and, in the end, can only lead to mistrust on all sides that can in turn become very, very ugly.

Serves no purpose? By now it should be evident that Western elites are trying to consolidate power over Asia, having already taken control of the internal politics of North America and most of Europe.

The public view being presented is that elite shamans of the EU, Davos, NATO etc. are somehow uniquely qualified to construct policies most beneficials to their peoples. Just listen to their TED talks and news interviews.

Obfuscation and censorship being what it is, their actual motives are unclear. Many find their agenda of unaccountable control unpleasant, and many under their sway are rebelling politicaally. Hence the popularity of Orban, Farage (and Brexit), the Greek Uxi vote, LePen, and Trump. Hence, likewise, the virulent counter-propaganda and censorship intended to paint assertions of popular sovereignty, nationhood, and tradition as distastefully primitive.

And then there’s Putin, who sees Russian nationalism, tradition and history as something worth preserving and defending, and even developing, and the races charged to his care as worthy of preservation. This can NOT be allowed to stand, and any qualiities of his leadership that are beneficial to his people must be stamped in the mud, and he himself must be smeared as an irresponsible autocrat lest anyone in the west find out that there IS an alternative.

In my mind, the “purpose” is so plain that I have to wonder why someone as familiar with Atlanticist machinations as Giraldi would wonder even for a moment about his question.

A much simpler solution than letting them imprisoned would be to quietly murder them…

Yes, but then you’d be wasting propaganda points. The Skripals are being guarded against the FSB, don’cha know, and being able to present occasional indications of how well MI6 is protecting its charges can provide heartwarming stories as needed for reinforcement of appropriate geopolitical opinion.

At this moment, John Helmer is running a column on Skrpial on his website:
http://johnhelmer.org/british-convert-skripal-sturgess-inquest-into-novichok-show-throw-trial/

Helmer summarizes Wednesday’s procedings:
“On September 22, Dame Heather Hallett, the coroner in the inquest into the cause of death of Dawn Sturgess on July 8, 2018, officially ordered the prosecution of a crime without a defence; in a trial in which the verdict has already been declared by the judge herself and the prosecutors; in which the surviving victims of the alleged crime, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, are not allowed to testify and forbidden to appear in public at all; when the three Russians accused of the crime are not permitted to be represented in the proceeding; in which there will be no jury; and in which the evidence of the crime, the weapon, the intention and motive of the perpetrators will be presented in secret so that there can be no testing for truth, fabrication, or lie.”

Helmer has collected his investigations (documenting British procedural anomalies and their reaction to investigative queries) in his book Skrpial in Prison:

For decades, now, Helmer’s column “Dances With Bears” has been my go-to source for the skinny on internal Russian politics and interactions with the West. He tells you more than you’ll ever want to know about the oligarchs’ machinations, Russian and Western, complete with pictures so you can put faces to the names.

Come to think of it, some of his columns might fit in well at unz.com.

John Helmer has also done extensive, detailed analysis of the Skripal and Navalny cases. His blog is Dancing with Bears.

The fact that Skripal and his daughter survived and are now living incommunicado in British or American custody is the most damming aspect of their case. What they might testify to must be so damaging to HMG that they must either be forcibly detained or paid handsomely to shut up and stay out of sight.

They can’t be relocated and remain unrecognized and if they’re getting rich on a US air base what kind of a life is that? Ye old hot potato for the British who apparently can’t possibly let the press get to them or let the Skripals speak or write.

The world press has zero interest in this bizarre aspect of the case.

Then there is the urgent need the British pohleece felt to remove the roof of Skripal’s house. A small amount of a Novichok class agent on the outside front door handle would have picked up atmospheric water in due course. If the agent is similar to sarin it would evaporate like water though if like VX it would not have evaporated quickly. Either way, whatever was on the handle seems hardly likely to seep from where it was exposed to outside air, water and wind into the interior of the house such as to require the removal of the roof.

What was really going on in that house is the \$64 question. Removal of the roof was a highly public endeavor which the Peelers thought had to be done no matter the consequences. Same with the policeman allegedly exposed to the agent. His car was destroyed apparently even though his exposure was at second hand at worst. Plus he was obviously bought off with a more expensive replacement (?) house and new car. I forget if his separation from the force was for medical reasons but he apparently seeks more money than was paid him on separation.

And the British are very, very leery of an honest coroner’s inquest into Dawn Sturgess’s death, as Helmer has tenaciously made clear.

Perhaps the reason the British are so goosey about this case has to do with the nearby Portion Down facility and what it might be up to. And he and Yulia were in a pub with Pablo Miller his former (?) MI6 case officer who looks too young to be living in retirement.

There’s nothing more dangerous than a powerful lunatic who takes himself seriously.

An incisive and pointed analysis; thank you for the black pill, Whitney.

We have indeed been guided into neo-feudalist habits. Most of us are closely bound to corporate masters by economic chains, and our intellectual activities and social behavior are kept in line by psychological coercion supported by Ash Conformity induced by by universal mass propaganda. In those pesky cases where activities become dangeroiusly effective, political dissidents are hauled off to dungeons to face various punishments of our police state under exaggerated or fabricated accusations of terror, subversion or treason as you point out.

In science, the analog of comiing up with “conspiracy theories” is called “exploring hypotheses”, where it is most favorably regarded. This admirable part of scientific back-and-forth is very human, not much different from a barroom discussion, except that it is hopefully carried out with more acumen and respect.

Scientific free-thinking does share with its “conspiracy theory” cousin a subversive tendency which naturally challenges orthodoxy. “Loony” ideas that often undercut propaganda are welcomed, and respectfully sidelined only after they have been falsified by the process of critical examination rather than negative criticism alone. Sometimes, like continental drift, they are even kept in a kind of reserve for later examination. The term intellectual ferment well characterizes this process, since at its best, it’s a bubbling cauldron of ideas that rise and sink with percolating development. I don’t mean to limit this metaphor to science, whose simplicity lends itself to easy charaacterization, but to describe in this way all sincere and energetic intellectual activities, from the most immediate everyday crafts to the most ethereal mathematics.

We seem to have forgotten that critical thinking alongside free thought arose in the medieval cities, havens where artisans and scholars alike had some opportunity to live lives “off the grid” of offficaldom. It was the free self-directed actiivity of these oddballs that was at least partly responsible for the eventiual rise of the best in western civilization. We are seeing their modern analogs brought into being throughout the internet, and the only question is whether they can be realized in some form in today’s political world. If not, instead of our hopes of expanding free thought to the entire world, the best hope of the west will be to pass the baton.

Today’s bottom-line struggle in geopolitics is whether any entity can evade the clutches of the western central bankers. The struggle sometimes appears political, but in so many cases these manifest themselves in the form of economic sanctions imposed through New York Banks.

That having been said, IMHO, the banks have been overplaying their hand, in the sense that political demands are now generating rebellion rather than compliance, among Russia, parts of eastern Europe, Iran, and, within the last several years, China.

Russia is instructive, because Putin managed to cut off political subservience to the west without alienating Russia’s self-seeking oligarchs. China has an enormously stronger sense of nationhood, much less respect for Europe, and, I dare say, much more political savvy. I’ll go out on a limb and predict that the Chinese, party and oligarchs alike, will play Soros and the western finance system, more so than the other way around.

Whether that’s a good thing for the west is a moot point. Although Trump handled this issue clumsiily, at least he recognized it. Biden’s policies don’t merit notice.

There should be an additional assessment category beside “Agree” and “Thanks”. My reaction to this particular response is, “I Wish”

Trying to suppress “conspiracy theory” ideas amounts to trying to stamp out intelligence. A human with a working brain, when confronted by a curious event, will immediately try to come up up with an explanation that makes sense of the phenomenon, even before checking out veracity. This isn’t “nutty”; it’s the way our minds are wired.

In fact, the use of science, and more broadly, the invention of critical thinking, were historical developments that transformed these tendencies from wellsprings of folklore and mythology, into directed channels for finding reliable truth.

For how much ruin can a nation endure and remain a nation? How much of this can we sustain and survive — at a time when we are carrying the burden of the defense of our allies in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia against a gathering modern axis of Russia and China, which our own interventionist policies helped to bring into being?

Our media are as partisan as they have been in our lifetimes. Our cultural elites endlessly mock the traditional values and beliefs of Middle America. Our national parties appear ever at sword’s point.

Mission accomplished: the pattern in today’s political world isn’t to maintain and develop a nation or culture, but to dominate a civilization. A dystopian system based on fear, deception and manipulation is much easier to rule than one peopled with individuals with a strong sense of fairness, independence and self-esteem. We’re living in an Idiocracy, but without the sense of humor.

People like to talk about average IQs, but the real action is at the right tail of the bell curve. If the Ashkenazi average is 15 points higher, Jews will become more prevalent the farther you go to the right.

This makes some serious assumptions about the distribtution’s shape.

From a mathematical/modelling point of view, assuming the IQ distributions to be Gaussian, you also have to assume that the width of the distributions is the same: otherwise, the wider Gaussian will always be able to dominate the uncrowded one out in the tails.

But are IQ distributions magically constrained somehow to be Gaussian, especially in the tails? Consider this fictitious example: claims are made that the IQ of children unable to play with their peers because of lockdown will be reduced because of restricted brain development (don’t know: just an example). Let’s hypothesize that the more intelligent within the group intuits the problem from their children’s behavior, and resists lockdown, and allows their children to play as before. Then, the next generation of this group will be as highly represented in the high-tail as before. On the other hand, for the lockdown-compliant, portions of the lower IQ curve will shift downward. The overall shape of the IQ distribution willl shift, but the high-end tail won’t.

The shape of the bell-curve can be expected to change whenever an IQ-dependent type of behavior can have an influence on IQ. In short, claims about how the tails of the distribution correlate with the mean are suspect.

Hannity and McConnell are not preferable.

The point is, compared to whom? You’re setting up an argument over which sludge in the barrel comes closest to scraping the bottom. But getting into a food fight comparing which public figures are the most obnoxious is silly, since this is as much a matter of personal (dis)taste as who you’d vote for class president in grade school. I’d prefer to ask, where, anywhere on the US political scene, is there someone advocating for a constructive outcome, and how are they planning to create that?

But even this discussion would really be off the mark, as the last 2 presidencies demonstrated that entrenched bureacratic clics, with the aid of corporate media, are the factions calling the shots. Political conflicts are betweeen oligarchs, facilitated by propaganda battles over public opinion.

At least 70% of the world’s population do not share the western social ideas.
They do not want to.
They never will.

Perhaps. I suspect that some do and some don’t, depending on ethnic and cultural differences within each country. But it shouldn’t be a matter of having countries vote to see whether they want Europeans to come in and set up “European Values”. The hyphenation “self-determination” starts with “self”. Each country needs to fix itself, assuming there are people within the country who even agree with western technocrats that something needs fixing. This principle should override any R2P nonsense, which is often self-serving propaganda anyway. NATO & Co. need to bug out and let people work out their own problems.

Having had my pipe-dream, I believe that national and corporate interests will always be trying to steer nations in directions that have nothing to do with their own national self-interest. So we should always be looking for the cui bono? behind humanitarian motives such as human rights and R2P (especially involving children) before giving political approval to such “corrections”.

The upsetting thing is that the worst elements of the GOP stand to gain from this sensible evacuation order freeing the country from an unwinnable occupation.

A few points:
1. Strategically, I agree that the evacuation is sensible.
2. Tactically, it was a disaster; we should ALL be upset that the dem regime couldn’t even organize a withdrawal.
3. Biden’s incompetence was on full display during the election, and our current behavior in Afghanistan is fully consistent with the quality of the Obama/Clinton foreign policy. No surprise here.
4. The democrats are getting all they deserve for corruption of this election, especially cancelling Tulsi Gabbard during the primaries who was the only candidate with a function mind. The dems had their chance to stop “the worst elements of the GOP” right there, but chose a candidate with a reputation for international corruption instead. This was again a seamless continuation of Wassermann-Schulz’ behavior in 2016 against Bernie.
5. Democratic Party behavior and politics seem to lead to nothing but domestic and international destruction, with nothing that can be seen as constructive or positive. Rabble-rousing shame and rage are the order of the day.

All this leads one to ponder whether even the “worst elements of the GOP” might not be preferable to current Democratic Party offerings. A lot of people seem to think so. But let’s keep the blame for the Afghan evac where it belongs.

history of “the whole offense, from Brzezinski until now . . .”
posted by a guest writer on Pat Lang’s blog
https://turcopolier.com/update-the-collapse-of-the-us-nato-project-in-afghanistan/#comment-185682

the axiomatic basis for the US failure in Afghanistan originates much earlier, to Zbigniew Brzezinki’s plan to use Afghanistan as a wedge to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1979. It took Brzezinki 20 years to spill the beans but spill them he finally did in a January 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, in which he revealed that he convinced Jimmy Carter to issue a directive providing secret support to the opposition to the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. Carter’s directive was issued on July 3, 1979, almost six months before the Soviet invasion on December 24. Brzezinski believed that the US meddling he proposed would cause a Soviet military response and voila!, they would have their Vietnam.

A key part of Brzezinski’s strategy was the buildup of jihadi groups using the Saudis to train them and opium trafficking to help finance them. This operation gave birth to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and fostered the growth of jihadi terrorism throughout Southwest Asia.

Have we all forgotten Charlie Wilson’s War, and Reagan’s praise of the noble anti-Soviet mujahideen freedom fighters?

In the 70’s and 80’s, the Russians had been trying to set up a puppet government, in a project as unpopular with the Organization of Islamic States as our own. Like the more recent US effort, the regime had also been trying to modernize Afghanistan, and was bringing unpopular modern european education and values to Afghan women, loss of which is so lamented here.

Back then, the US, that ever-so-stalwart supporter of human rights, had its CIA collaborate with Prince Turki of Saudi intelligence ISI, to provide funds and weapons. Bagman Osama Bin Laden delivered these to the the jihadist opposition, in order to overthrow the Russian-supported leadership, and re-impose even stricter Wahhabist values we’re lamenting today. Payback is such a b***h.

The jihadists are getting better. It’s taking them only 3 weeks to take over after the US started withdrawal, while it took them 3 years after the Russians left.

Some say the war led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union; we have yet to see what repercussions will follow from the US departure. Graveyard of Empires.

Addendum to my earlier post: I found a link this morning that documents my concerns more thoroughly:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/unvaccinated-discrimination/

What has our society become, when social castigation has replaced informed discourse to resolve questions in the public intellectual marketplace?

Indeed: while there may be lunatic anti-vaxxers, there are also fanatically indoctrinated pro-vaxxers. Data from Israel seems to indicate that the Pfizer vaccine, at least, has reduced efficacy against the Delta variant, and this is the sort of outcome Geert Vanden Bosch had anticipated.

Rather than take a closer look at the possibility that the mRNA approach might be a long-term failure, there’s a misdirection campaign, that somehow evil, irresponsible unvaccinateds are the ones really responsible for all the breakouts and rise in cases and deaths.

This attitude is both scientifically and politically toxic. Emotional anti-vaxxers might harbor excessive values of righteous anger against corporations for pharmaceutical deception, but shoot-me-ups are promoting outright hatred of their fellow-citizens, and practically advocating witch-burnings.

Where do I get my yellow star?

Mostly going to Istanbul or some neighboring Stan and charging top dollar for a seat. Afghan airlines still flying out ( whether they’ll offer return flights is another matter). I would think fuel supplies will either run out or be stolen by corrupt Afghans.

Since American arms will soon be unavailable to supply the black market from within Afghanistan, the profiteers are having to travel outside to establish ASAP new suppliers, so arms flow to their Taliban customers won’t be interrupted.

They will install solar panels and send their best students study in the US.

Given the declining state of American universities, and the upcoming quality of the Chinese, Afghan students might prefer China. Learning Mandarin and making Chinese connections might be better long-term business investments fo Afghanis.

As for solar panels, the example of performance of the American electrical grid might affect decisions there as well.

Identity politics, previously almost unknown and widely ridiculed in Brazil, was suddenly propelled into the mainstream, and far-left radicals are now not only given a pass but actively promoted. Brazilian society is heavily media-driven, and the climate on both the legacy media and on social media have suddenly started to resemble a far-left echo chamber of AOC fans. Funnily enough, this sharp left-wing turn was accompanied by an intensification of the Americanization of Brazilian culture, and I’d say that Brazilian youth culture is, at this point, indistinguishable from American youth culture.

This sounds remarkably similar to the politics-by-psychosis that has taken over in America, right down to imposition of disney-cultural values. Just wondering, has the level of demonization of opposition and imposition of censorship taken over in Brazil as it has in the US?

Thank you for the reply; I do appreciate a little bit what you were/are trying to manage. However, a subject with such a broad scope as this one isn’t likely to be settled easily, and attempts may backfire. You sound beleagured, and I can’t pretend to understand the pressures you’re under. But you should understand how some of us find your comments discordant.

An article published here early last year by Pepe Escobar laid out most of what is objectionable in the approach to COVID by Western institional medicine. The corrupting political machinations go a long way toward explaining my skepticism of the TINA arguments that mRNA is the best “cure:”
https://www.unz.com/pescobar/why-france-is-hiding-a-cheap-and-tested-virus-cure/?

The subsequent development of the COVID drama onto the vaccine stage has only instantiated and clarified on a global scale the events described in this French microcosm. I think many CDC skeptics view the political scene from this prism, and would prefer a health strategy with more established, and trustworthy, safety records than mRNA. (As an off-the-cuff fantasy, I’d most prefer a “conventional” vaccine, one capable of giving an inoculum of COVID small enough for only a minor infection.)

But your argument at the end came as an especially great surprise. The rhetoric of this latter section appeals to consensus and demonizes dissidents, and includes liberal use of guilt by association. In fact, this part of the interview could be taken as a textbook example of argument from “Ash Conformity”, a style very alien to your usual astute precision. Coming from the author of your American Pravda series, this is an anomalous departure from your normally impeccable intellectual standards.

I do appreciate what you say about a much time and effort being necessary to organize one’s thoughts, even to explain them to oneself. So I hope this article simply represents a reflexive swat an annoying gadflly.

If your attitude changes from wanting to do less of this to accepting more, may I suggest you invite the FLCCC to submit an article. While not being anti-vaxxers themselves, I’m sure they could articulate the situation better than most, in a way interesting, and genuinely informative, to you and your readers.
.

Do you really think you can enjoy “good fortune” deriving from what some here are claiming is a sophisticated mass murder operation?

For the past 30 years, I’ve been staring the devil in they eye, watching an agenda of destruction turn the West into simultaneously outraged, ashamed, terrorized, and self-loathing people, learning to hate and despise the noblest achievements of our humanity, and each other.

All that’s left is dark humor.

But some day I might let you know how I really feel.

Another aspect:
IF it were established that HCQ + Zinc, Ivermectin or other widely available therapeutics were available, the new shots (they are not ‘vaccines’) wouldn’t qualify for Emergency Use authorization which they needed in order to be able to manufacture and distribute these things.

Second: the assumption is that all these companies have the end user’s benefit in mind even though Pfizer, for example, has a long track record of falsifying, selling bad medicine and so forth. What if the reason they want everyone to have the vaccine has nothing to do with curing covid? Do we know what’s in the vaccines? No, it’s a private sector secret. Do we know their after-effects? No, there is no disciplined, rigourous post-shot reporting method.

The whole thing is a huge sh*t show from beginning to end. They suppress information about viable therapeutics – which would make any notion of their being a ‘pandemic’ entirely superfluous, shut down schools and the private small business sector ruthlessly, cause untold suffering, illness and death by suspending normal medical and other needed cultural services, and yet people like Ron Unz here – whom I greatly respect – just overlook all these glaring anomalies, indeed crimes – and just buy into the whole ‘this is a pandemic and the only way out is to do what Big Pharma and Big Government (controlled by Big Intelligence and Big Banksters) tell us.

As Trump might tweet: “Sad!”

I suppose I should be reticent myself. I’ve been depressingly aware of Big Pharma corruption since at least the 90’s. Around that time, I also realized that the medical industry would expand as the boomers aged. So I trickled some contributions into health care equities which have done quite well, thank you.

Was this conflict of interest a betrayal of my principles? I answer that by explaining that I’m hedging my emotions. If by some fortunate chance, effective reform causes pharma stocks to decline, I can be happy with the political result despite the economic hit. If, as I expect, pharma continues to have its way, this carbuncle on the butt of the beast will share in its good (and massive) economic fortune.

Concidentally, just last week, Dr. Paul Marik of the FLCCC discussed this in the FLCCC weekly video:

https://odysee.com/@FrontlineCovid19CriticalCareAlliance:c/flccc-weekly-update-28-july-2021-covid:6

at about the 10:45 mark. He quotes a figure of 3913 “major representative variants”, although he whittles that down to only 41 of the 403 possible in the spike receptor binding domain that are “critical for protein interactions.”

Alas, although Paul Marek’s comments are generally data-driven, I just viewed this video yesterday and I haven’t had a chance to source these statements and dig into them further. On the other hand…

…three-thousand, schmee-thousand; who’s counting?

What I tried to make very clear in my Q&A responses is that I have absolutely no interest in the vaxxing issue. I haven’t bothered looking into it, and I don’t intend to do so in the future. That’s why I’m not “engaging” with people like you.

What a curious comment! (At least) three points reeking of an atypical intellectual inconsistency leap out:

1. Why would you devote a 9000 word interview to a topic in which you have “absolutely no interest”?

2. Until now, I’ve never heard you comment at such length on a subject that “I haven’t bothered looking into”.

3. Surely you’ve run across many explanations while writing your American Pravda series that are even more outlandish that the ones you invoke here. Yet you construct an argument against ALL mRNA skepticism based guilt by association. This is strange on multiple levels: you know better.

“I shudder to think what goes on the head” of a formerly impeccably objective intellectual figure who displays such inconstent behavior so suddenly.

I hope you understand why some of your readers might be sincerely puzzled, and that you at least see how the human tendency to explain the inexplicable might lead people to come up with all sorts of reasons on all sorts of topics. In science, that’s called hypothesizing, and scientists (at least formerly) weren’t condemned for entertaining hypotheses impossibly strange to those who “haven’t bothered looking into it.” Information and imagination expand the evidence base. Analysis, synthesis and falsification bring what we know into focus. Reason is what keeps us on track, not censorship and rhetoric.

Very fair point. Ron himself has given several examples of where he has undergone this process himself. This one comes to mind:
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-oddities-of-the-jewish-religion/?highlight=ksrael+shahak

But if you are providing that source, assuredly you have an opinion on Abramson.

Not at all. I found the dissenter doing a cursory search on Abramson because I wasn’t familiar with him, and because you expressed such high praise. I did acquire an opinion on your opinion.

As for this,

That would be a strawman on your part, as I never stated directly or indirectly that one must accept his work in unadulterated fashion.

,
Well, if I misconstrued your intent to invoke A as an expert witness, please accept my apologies.

Indeed, Abramson is an authority on this matter.

I suggest you read Seth Abramson and his monumental work on this topic. Fact checked and fully sourced.

I can’t imagine how I got the impression you criticized, directly or indirectly.

To the contrary, it is most germane given you supplied a link that attempted to discredit Abramson’s work. The relevance of this fact should be obvious to a critical thinker. It is clear you have an opinion about him. So what is your specific objection?

You continue to miss my point: I supplied the link not as a proof that I myself think that Abramson is necessarily wrong, but to provide an example of someone who does not see Abramson as an authority, so that not everyone accepts him as do you. Consequently, to cite Abramson is an authority, as if what he says is true, is to accept these premises uncritcally.

The fact that you do is inconsistent with your self-image as a critical thinker. Actually, accepting Abramson or anyone else as as an authority, in the sense of one whose word should be accepted carte-blanche, leaves critical thinking at the door.

On the other hand, perhaps it was the dulcet tones of Neil Diamond being played by Nero while Rome burned.

If any publicity is good publicity, then the image of Ron Unz strutting down the street in rhythm with Solitary Man is the kind of ineradicably incongruous and unforgettable image that advertising agencies dream about. Honestly, that’s not the most eccentric nor worst of habits.

But yes, when something “gives you that sinking feeling” you have to wonder whether benign explanations are ignoring less pleasant possibilities. From this conflict are born the “conspiracy theories” which some few entertain, which many would prefer not to contemplate, and which yet others would prefer to censor.

What a mess.

I offered a recommendation to GetAClue in hopes to spur him to critically think about the topic.

Well, I guess things are tough all over. I explained to you that citing someone’s opinion is an argument from authority in the hopes of getting you to think more criticall, too, and that didn’t do much good either.

Whether you think that Abramson is an aurhoity, and someone else doesn’t, and whether I even care about the man and his critics is NOT germaine to a critical analysis of the point of your objection. You’re trying to drag Abramson into this when no one else here cares.

What is germaine are whatever arguments you can present to refute GetAClue’s point. Whether some outside party diagrees with that point, or whether yet someone else disagrees with the first someone, invites us into building a house of cards, consisting of one authority piled upon another, until the whole Tower of Babel collapses. The irrelevance of that sort of rhetorical device should be obvious to a critical thinker. Honestly, I’m beginning to have my doubts about your acumen.

If you investigate who any of the mislabeled- big pharma- firms really are you will discover they are really stalking horses for firms like Blackrock and Vanguard. As majority shareholders they control the Board of Directors and they directly or subtly determine who the C suite corporate officers are and thus directly influence corporate priorities.

Your comments make me nostalgic for the good ol’ days, simpler times, when it was still possible to dismiss as exaggerated speculation Alex Jones’ concerns, that high-level collusion might be taking place at Bilderberg meetings.

What do you think of frogs boiling in the darkness as metaphor?

And it’s not just narrative control over the covid-19/sars-cov-2/vaxxes topics that are at play here. This is only the latest so-bludgeoning, of the western dialectic upon which past western success has been largely based.

LOL! I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly what you’re so upset about here, but my own emotions in the matter are in 100% sync with yours, I think.

There are so many dimensions to the “bludgeoning of the western dialectic”, wherein its very achievements have been turned to corrupt itself.

Just to add another issue that hasn’t yet (?) been discussed in this blog: science has garnered a great deal of justifiable respect as a methodolgy that’s extremely helpful in arriving at natural truths. But propagandists have surgically isolated the respect surrounding this achievement, so that the word “science” as it appears in the “news” has come to represent a cultishly prescriptive ideology, that’s now fulfilling the same role for punishing dissidents as accusations of witchery or sorcery did in earlier times.

Assertive propaganda has inserted its tentacles in all media: cable news, social media, much print media. Only particular viewpoints are promoted, and opposing voices are censored. Social pressure in the form af cancelling ones job or voice, or denigration (deniers, truthers, vaxxers, theorists) have turned the mainstream intellectual landscape into a burnt out forest of conformity. This phenomenon has enabled the corruption of reason practiced all around us. We need look no further than the Post’s reporting on Hunter’s Laptop for a case history.

With this extreme psychological onslaught, critical thinking, once the hallmark of the west, is being replaced by the most primitive and savage tribal impulses, and it’s being presented as if it were a cultural advance.

Actually, that is what critical thinkers do–provide sources as evidence. So, what exactly do you object to Abramson’s work? I imagine that you are able to offer a cogent response, right?

Sure can! Critical thinkers provide logical arguments as evidence; sources are secondary. Rely directly on the evidence, rather than the name of the party claiming to provide the evidence. Instead of throwing out an author’s name, restate his specific argument that you believe makes your point. As critical thinkers know, the quality of the argument is intrinsic and doesn’t depend on the reputation of the person making it. By invoking Abramson, you aren’t engaging in critical thinking, but arguing from authority, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is actually a logical fallacy.

So see what’s left after you cut Abramson out of the loop. State the particular proposition you are trying to support (actually, it’s not even clear what point you’re contending), and mention the specific evidence or argument that Abramson provides in his book that you find so persuasive. It always helps to know exactly what we’re fighting over!

Ron has been catching a lot of flak for excluding pharmacological treatments for COVID, and restricting the debate to vaccines.

It occurs to me that he might find it interesting to into the suppression, denigration and censorship of early-outpatient COVID drug treatments, and do an America Pravda article on it. It’s right up his alley, and there’s a surfeit of material.

His attitude during the interview is incongruous to his general penchant for open invetsigation. I hope his neglect of pharmacological angles is only because he hasn’t actually looked into it seriously. I really don’t want to have to try to explain it if it’s something else.

I suggest you read Seth Abramson and his monumental work on this topic. Fact checked and fully sourced.

Opinions differ:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/18/2002883/-Don-t-cite-Seth-Abramson-as-a-source

But citing an authority isn’t an argument that a critical thinker would use anyway.

He said approximately 2,000 deaths in a population of 220 million. That’s about the same number as the province I live in… population 6 million.., why the difference… almost everyone in Nigeria takes ivermectin for parasites or HCQ for malaria…nothing to see here citizen, move along now.

Thank you. The West has jumped the shark in a curious way: it has come to prioritize glamor over elegance.

A committment to high-tech has set in, to the point where low-tech solutions are rejected simply because they don’t have enough glamor (= technical coolness + \$\$\$). Of course, pandemeic profiteering, regulatory capture and cronyism are the mechanisms behind this phenomenon in the case of COVID, but the upshot is, the developing world is where the best advances in COVID treatment have occurred, precisely because that part of the globe is still free to investigate low-technology solutions. Even how the research is done differs.

In the West, the most respected solutions come from centralized government-funded Big Science, carried out by elite scientists whose motivations are often if not usually fame and financial opportunity (e.g., Fauci). The mass of medical practitioers simply turn the crank to implement CDC and WHO diktats.

Outside the West, research and decision-making are distributed. The discoveries of the efficacy of HCQ, and especially Ivermectin, arguably qualify as brilliant. But this work was done to a large extent by doctors concerned more about the status of their patients (along with heroic frontline physicians in the West willing to face opprobrium), whose primary resources are their own own wit, common sense, and internet access.

“What should we do about a cure for COVID?”

The West: “We have this super-cool technology that lets us encapsulate genetic materials in a nanolipid in such a way that we can get cellular genetic process to create antibodies! By the way, we really must do something to discourage those crackpots using aquarium cleaner and de-worming medicine. Some people will try anything.” A recipe for ego-driven bias, corruption and censorship.

Asia/Africa: “Fauci and friends in those super labs in the USA, in the early 2000’s, found out that a malaria medicine chloroquine did a job on SARS. I dunno, it’s cheap and safe enough, maybe we should try it out on COVID and see if we can tweak it.” So simple, so to-the-point, so elegant.

One of the less frequently-disussed scientific western developments is propaganda, which has reached such a level of perfection that it has not simply corrupted critical thinking itself, but has managed to implement censorship and group-think at a level which subverts science itself. For this reason, the ability ot practice reason has moved to the East and South where institutional control of public opinion hasn’t yet stifled reason.

There’s a TINA (there is no alternative) aspect to this discussion. The choice isn’t between vaccines and nothing. The choice is between early drug treatment and/or prophylaxis, vaccines and nothing. The first deserves much more attention, and clinical comparison with the second.

As of a month or two ago, one of the countries in the world with the absolute lowest vaccination rates was India, with only 3% of the population vaccinated. And that also happens to be the country where millions have recently died. If the vaccines were relatively dangerous and Covid relatively harmless, wouldn’t you expect it to be the other way round?

…and India also had and still has, fewer covid deaths (425,000 vs 630,000) than the US even with its 4.2x greater population. Furthermore, the recent second peak appeared AFTER the vaccine was introduced, along with other western mainstream goodies such as remdesevir, conveniently administerd intravenously at a local hospital.

Alongside introduction of these advanced western technologies, use of hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin early-treatment kits were disccontinued, thus introducing a confounding factor. The runaway covid peak was arrested in early May, after use of home kits of Ivermectin and/or HCQ were distributed generally once again. That side of the story, and the lawsuit against WHO’s recommendation agaainst Ivermectin, is promoted here:
https://joannenova.com.au/2021/06/indias-health-dept-stops-ivermectin-use-but-others-sue-the-who/

The story isn’t as simple as vaccines or no vaccines, or lockdown vs no lockdown, since most Asian countries freely use alternative treatment protocols with apparent success. Media explanation of rises and declines in COVID neglect important factors, and are so incompetently vague that they can be made to support all sorts of explanations.

But the truth of the matter is, that when Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroqine protocols are applied a few days after symptoms, the outcome is about as good as if not better than vaccination. We don’t have clinical comparisons, however, IMHO, for the same reason that there was never a comparison between efficacies of HCQ and Remdesivir: results were likely to prove embarrassing.

The “vaccinated” are CAUSING everyone to catch a cold. It’s obvious.

Everyone’s dying of the plague; it must be God’s anger at the infidels and witches and the politically incorrect, so we need to burn them.

…what passes for policy-making today.

Just sending folks home to get sicker and THEN treating them is negligence that rises to criminality.

The following is from the a 12/20 review of early treatments by Peter McCullogh et al. at
https://rcm.imrpress.com/article/2020/2153-8174/RCM2020264.shtml.

The majority of serious viral infections require early treatment with multiple agents and this approach has not been applied in trials of COVID-19 sponsored by governments or industry.

This paper coins the acronym SMDT = Sequential Multidrug Therapy, but it’s just a term for the early outpatient (at home) treatment using appropriate combinations of drugs This is a strategy which had been known and practiced by a minority of western physicians since spring of 2020, and by doctors in Asia earlier. The first 2 pages up to Figs. 1 and 2 provide a quite readable explanation of how SMDT should have been applied strategically to treat COVID .

A few observations:

The first speaker, Ben White, nicely demolishes most of the arguments of the “is” supporters, before they even say anything

I’m confused: the first speaker lists reasons for maintaining why Israel IS a rogue state, nicely substantiating rather than demolishing arguments for that position. Did you type “is” while actually intending “isn’t”?

The left never considers that what they consider “backwards” is normal to those other cultures.

…nor that maybe, just maybe, that what we have in this culture really might be advanced relative to others, despite all the opprobrium cast upon “Western culture” and its defects.

The flip side of Critical Race Theory is, if much of socially-determined behavior really is cultural, then maybe we should take a good look at what we have in the moment, what we might have, and have an open (uncensored) discussion of what policies would make things better for each of us; before accepting the tenets of CRT and letting that doctrine oppress alternatives. In other words, Crticial Race Theory contains the seeds of its own criticism.

If culture really is arbitrary, then we should recognize that whether child marriage, for example, is or is not acceptable is a cultural choice, which is NOT necessarily based on or supported by rational argument. There comes a point where we as citizens HAVE to say, no, that’s wrong, and mean it, with the full knowledge that we are asserting our own cultural value over that of others, because we have made the arbitrary judgment that living a certain way makes for a society that we prefer. Any argument that urges us to accept what we deem to be abominable behavior in the interest of “human rights” or “global values” is an attempt to brush aside a fundamental disagreement and surrender legitimate preferences.

Are Americans all commanded by law to be ‘constructive’ at all times?

Excellent point. They had provocation to go much further. The participants in the Stop the Steal Rally should be commended for their restraint.

The rally was held against a backdrop of 4 years of our secret police and “justice” department apparatchiks engaging in political persecution worthy of the Jacobins; the impeachment process was abused not once but twice; there was blatant disregard for constitutional election procedures; the election outcome was literally incredible; propagandistic declarations were asserted that what’s in front of our eyes isn’t really there, and big tech social media engaged in social media decapitations that would have made Robespierre proud.

Against this backdrop, anything demonstrably constructive would have had to have been pretty extreme.

To tell the truth, my general impression of Christianity is as a Judaism 2.0, a major bug fix only distantly related to 1.0. The ideas that I find most inspirational are “I am the way the truth and the light”, and the socio-political attitudes expressed in the Beatitudes and them Good Samaritan, which encourage dialing back tribal exclusivity and racism, and turning the other cheek to de-escalate interpersonal hostility.

Like democracy itself, however, Christian values require a strong, extra-governmental cultural ethic and sense of fair play in order to resist opportunistic attack. But resistance has collapsed: fair play has become a joke, and cultural norms have been under attack for a century or two, to the point where mainstream culture now reflexively promotes its own demise.

All this is playing out amidst a collapse in critical thinking and a proliferation of industrial-strength deception. It’s a situation that invokes the meme of Satan as the Great Deceiver. He must be having a field day.

To us happy infidels, watching Catholics argue over which figment of their imagination is the correct one is like watching lunatics fighting in Bedlam over which one of them is the real Napoleon.

To us unhappy infidels, watching this argument is like watching a fraudster victimize a mark: it’s done with trickery and subterfuge, and intellectual betrayal. Just because it’s happening here, in an arena for which you have little respect, does NOT mean political battles are being fought differently in arenas where you have a stake.

This same mushy tenor pervades today’s western culture: no truth that might clearly determine policy is allowed to come to light. This loss of clarity is horrifying to anyone who appreciates rational behavior.

Is Biden really saying that minor alterations in election laws, all of which would have to pass muster with federal courts and the Supreme Court, represent an existential threat to our republic?
This is beyond hyperbole. It is ridiculous. It is absurd.

Of course Biden is Lincoln. He can even be Mata Hari if it suits him.

The continuing playbook: make outrageous claims, obfuscate evidence, and censor dissidence. Make sure the underlying facts are never brought to light, and everything becomes credible, people can say anything, and politics turns into one big food fight.

Burying information so that facts stay debatable is the recipe for convincing people to take anything seriously.

The Deep State does not care what the American people want. They know that most American people are inane fools and will believe anything.

I agree with the former, but I think you’re misrepresenting the latter.

A lot of us think, despite the “reported” outcome, that “most Americans” actually voted for Trump. The Stop the Steal Rally confirmed this. Plenty of us realize that the elite’s are promoting flagrantly destructive civilizational policies, and don’t really care whether that’s due to corruption or incompetence.

Second point:

Most Americans would rather watch America’s Got Talent, or Dancing With The Stars, or The Masked Singer than being informed about important issues.

Actually, I think that conscientiously trying to be informed by watching network news or following elite media can make you much more disposed to going along with “the Deep State plutocratic oligarchy” than being simply ignorant. These Americans are not stupid, but brainwashed into participating in the mass hysteria. They believe they are in an enlightened majority, and that it’s their fringe opponents who hold stupid and extreme views. They accept palpably weird viewpoints because they are being selectively informed, censored as necessary, and subjected to the most sophisticated propaganda in the history of the world.

In this environment, intelligence can help you come up with explanations for believing propaganda, and fear can lead you to accept self-destruction. Critical thinking, which can lead you to look behind and rationally assess elite narratives, is suppressed as morally irresponsible.

What the hell universe are you living in??? There is not one truth in these three paragraphs.

I agree absolutely, but your question is, unfortunately, not sarcastic as you undoubtedly intended: we are living in 2 universes.

On the one hand, it was obvious to those following election procedures that the Presidential election was extremely irregular if not outright stolen. The Stop the Steal Rally of January 6 was a politically-healthy response to massive voting irregularities. The gathering was a classic instance of a protected First Amendment right: “Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”. It was illegitimately suppressed by a government and Justice Department that had been hijacked by corrupt political operatives.

On the other hand, we have the MSM news version, whereby a racist politician was rejected by the people in a record-high turnout for the Presidency. A violent extremist insurrection to overthrow this “most secure election in history” was fortunately put down, and ringleaders arrested. Extremist voices and social media accounts irresponsibly countering this view were suppressed.

We’re not dealing with 2 parties, we’re dealing with 2 attitudes toward propaganda, 2 sides of the Ash conformity experiment that’s contemporary American politics.

Who ya gonna believe, me or your own lyin’ eyses?

If this is a scam, it sure is a doozy.

I just finished the video by Sergei Kurginian mentioned by Israel Shamir, in which mention is made of Harvard Prof Charles Lieber, who was accused of working with Chinese intel. Until this I hadn’t realized that Lieber was renowned for his work on nanowires.

Just before that, I came across the viewgraphs (in Spanish) of a research group at the University of Almeira in Spain that a sample of COVID vaccine that they tested was mostly graphene oxide. They publish ultraviolet fluorescence data, transmission electron microscopy images, optical microscopy, and electron diffraction patterns. An interim report in English is here:
https://carterheavyindustries.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/official-interim-report-in-english-university-of-almeria.pdf
Fact checking sites pooh-pooh the reports’ conclusions as unsubstantiated because the vaccine package insert didn’t list graphene oxide as an ingredient (I’m not making that up).

Turns out, graphene is commonly used for supporting nanowire circuits. It makes you wonder how little in this COVID episode is truly accidental.

(I didn’t bring up magnets sticking to vaccinated arms lest Ron ban me.)

Youtube took down your video
“A Manufactured Illusion: Dr. David Martin with Reiner Fuellmich: The Illusion of Demand”.

Thank you, youtube, for drawing my attention with your censorship. Here it is on bitchute:
xxhttps://www.bitchute.com/video/JyZqaOm5cBFO/

This article is disappointing compared with most of Ron’s fare. Although he recounts the resurgence of the natural origin theory reasonably completely, he omits his characteristic analytical critique, here of of the quality of the arguments the nature-proponents.

A lot of the evidence cited in this article are opinionated pronouncements from experts, with very little discussion of evidence. These “arguments from opinion” are in the same genre as Dumas Malone’s argument that Jefferson could not have had an affair with Sally Hemmings, because Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman and a gentleman would never do such a thing. Plausible nonsense. They fail my own definition of an expert, as someone who has a strong enough intellectual grasp to present technical reasoning incisively enough to be clearly understood. Bret Weinstein is an example. Drosten, Fauci and Daszak are NOT in this class.

Show me the man, and I’ll show you the “crime”. We are living in a totalitarian society.

Suhail Shaheen says that the talks are proceeding sluggishly. I wonder if they’re having trouble settling upon which pronouns to use.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the Jews. If history is any indication, their predations follow a pattern, which, following the logic of human response to abuse, always ends in them coming to grief.

Actually, I worry quite a bit.

As a general princiole, I distrust “pendulum” theories of automatic self-correction like the one you suggest here. Corrections of this sort more resemble a support timber snapping under an excessive load than a gentle reversal of motion.

To the contrary, I would worry about corruption and predation of any sort, since consequences of that sort of thing can cause incalculable suffering over centuries, and even when corrected (an optimisitic assumption), the recovery can take an equally long time and involve horrible excesses.

Like viruses and cancers, it’s best to take social abuses seriously and attend to them openly and as soon as possible. Covering up these issues under a tissue of “hate”, or under reassurances that they will all somehow go away, is just procrastinaton that lets the problem metastaasize.

Terms such as “hate speech”, “conspiracy theory”, “racist” and “anti-semitic” have been linguisitically melted in propaganda pots, and forged into super-pejoratives whose real meaning and power now far transcends their literal origins. They’ve been given such strong psychological connotations that it’s impossible to speak these phrases as if they’re a part of the language.

I feel like someone watching a magic trick, intrigued by seeing it happen, but not quite able to figure out how it’s done; or more importantly, how it can be undone. Part of the remedy, I think, is to joke about them hyperbolically, but these phrases have become so ingrained in political paranoia that not even that is allowed.

I like your answer to the age-old question, “How can people be so stupid?” (It’s always the other guy!)

Regardless of low IQ or high IQ human beings many times do and say stupid things to be accepted by their peers or to collect a paycheck.

But I’d quibble over whether it’s precisely cultural. It’s true that a lot of thinking is cultural, tribal even. Even the most thoughtful of us routinely peerform our actions out of habit, go along with tribal/cultural impressions, and judge the pronouncements of our medicine men, witch doctors and sages as likely. “Mostly true”, as the fact checkers would say.

The much more reliable guide, critical thinking, as noticed (invented?) by the Greeks, is just too much work for general use.

As if the effort and time barriers weren’t enough, the Ash Conformity experiment showed that many people will actually veto their own critical thinking purely to follow the tribal thinking of their peers. It’s true that the basis for what you describe is cultural, but it’s supported by a very solid underlying foundation of psychological vulnerability.

A culture is cognitively healthy to the extent that the tribal consensus agrees with ratiocination. In today’s culture, the 2 are being driven asunder. The rational are being persecuted, and we’re going back to a dark age, after which we’ll have to discover the advantages of critical thinking all over again.

In the meantime, the oligarchs will enjoy a situation where they can marginalize those pesky folk who don’t just accept but actually think through their propaganda. Tyrants hate critical thinkers, as witnessed by the fates of Socrates, Giordano Bruno and Galileo, to name a few.

There’s quite the deprogramming job ahead.

Let the Russian planes bomb the next British or US ship violating their territorial waters with Super-Glue barrels.

I really, really, really, really like this idea!

The trouble is, the Russians would be accused of chemical warfare, using “an agent that has been determined to be a potential carcinogen by the State of California” on American service men. I’d recommend horse manure and/or urine instead, although I suspect the spin in that case would be that the Russians’ are practicing chemical warfare by irresponsibly dumping methane into the atmosphere, thus destroying the planet.

It’s not hard to come up with spin like this if you’re audience is sufficiently dumb and/or arrogant. I still don’t think you’ll win the infowar, but I very much like your idea about having fun in the process!

The Red Russian Rapist Army operates in the same fashion that it has for centuries. Invasion, Rape, Murder, Ethnic Cleansing, and Genocide.

…not at all like the Norsemen, and Normans, on the British Isles, the Teutonic Knights in the Baltics, the Scandinavian traders in early Poland and Russia, the Muslim and Italian slavers from Crimea, the Ottomans in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, or the Albigensian Crusaders in Languedoc. The mirror of history reflects much the same from all directions. Everyone has excuses for their behavior, the difference being, we don’t hear the Russian apologia in the west.

Saker plays the “racist” card on behalf of the Russian Red Rapist army. Some things never change, and Russians will NEVER be able to get past their inferiority complex.

You’re ironically expressing your own western European racist attitude.

There is one more thing I think Putin could do: make a solemn speech and directly address the people of the West telling them the truth about what the western political leaders are doing.

I enjoy reading Saker’s articles, but sometimes he crosses over into inexplicable naivete. This suggestion of relying American public opinion is one example: few in America listen to Putin directly, and the news sources who tell Americans what he “really” said will excerpt quotes as necessary to portray whatever he says as the ravings of a war monger.

Consider that even after all this time, the disintegration of the political truce in Ukraine at the end of February 2014 is now generally regarded in the west as the Ukrainian people exuberantly liberating themselves from Russia. Hardly anyone knows the reality that a sniper-supported violent coup overthrew a peaceful compromise to hold democratic elections 6 months later. Even fewer know that the European state guarantors of the agreement walked away.

It’s hopeless to think that Putin’s words could be remotely effective after being passed through the meat-grinder of the western propaganda machine. Unless, perhaps, he did something so truly drastic as to attract direct viewership, like giving the address in English.

Make it to the end of that auto erotic self quoting series of rehashes?

Did I call it or what?

Ok, I looked, both at the authors and institutions, and at the data as well. Their discussion leads off with

These findings suggest low to moderate-certainty evidence showing a survival benet without harm of ivermectin for treatment against covid-19. Low
certainty evidence on improvement and deterioration support the possibility of clinical benet with ivermectin. Low certainty evidence also suggest it could be
a useful prophylaxis. Overall, therefore, the evidence suggests that early use of ivermectin may reduce morbidity and mortality from covid-19, based on
reductions in covid-19 infections when ivermectin was used as post-exposure prophylaxis, more favourable point estimates for mild to moderate disease
compared with severe disease for death due to any cause, and on the evidence demonstrating reductions in the number of patients deteriorating.

Your point is?

CDC’s recommended treatment for early COVID is to stay home, wait until your lips turn blue from lung malfunction, and then go the hospital. By comparison, Ivermectin sounds pretty good.

We can tell you never made it to the end!

And here’s a link to a freely downloadable eBook, containing my four main articles on the subject:

https://www.unz.com/ebook/covid-catastrophe-ebook/

Those who wanted to avoid Corona have had the opportunity for at least 2-3 months

Just wondering whether Russia has early outpatient treatment. Do they have at-home medications, or do they just tell people to stay at home and go to hospitals after their lips turn blue from lungs malfunction, as in the west?

Variabilty in early treatment is an important but ignored confounder in COVID statistics.

Au contraire: As a bioweapon, COVID is near perfect. Savvy generals have long known that it is often better to burden an enemy with wounded soldiers rather than battlefield dead.

COVID spreads throughout the population with a long inconspicuous incubation enabling an inherently virulent contagion. Medical facilities are overloaded before the cause is identified. With COVID, discharged patients are often rendered unfit by outright organ damage, or the incomplete recovery of long-hauler syndrome, both caused by a special propensity of the spike protein to attach to ACE2 receptors, especially human, and thus activate cytokine excesses.

Naval ships that have been disabled this way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_naval_ships
COVID effectively turns such a vessel from military to medical, and likewise reorganizes an initially functioning target society into the sick, the quarantined and their caregivers, each group devoted to dealing with the disease and little else.

From the viewpoint of a bioweapons designer, what’s not to like? The only defect is that prophylactic treatment with simple repurposed drugs have proven to be surprisingly effective, a point which may have caught bio-designers looking in high-tech directions off-guard.

The combination of these specific properties gives more weight to the hypothesis that not only did COVID originate synthetically, but that it was actually designed with nefarious intent.

Anyone know where to get “Kick me, I’m White!” tee shirts for some of my friends?

Replacing personal critical thinking with tribal compliance is taking us back into the dark ages. So it shouldn’t be surprising to find phenomena remiiniscent of some of the most destructive practices of Medieval Europe. Three that come to mind are the Children’s Crusade, the post-crusade Flagellant movement, and iconoclastic practices of the Reformation.

Very sorry about the plague on your house.

I dunno, but putting someone on a ventilator sets off alarms: I thought that had been found to be detrimental. In your place, I’d make sure you have a doctor who understands proactive treatments like the MATH+ protocol at
https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/math-plus-protocol/. There’s evidence that ivermectin is especially helpful in general, and that steroids reduce lung inflammation.

Thanks for the downer; I needed that ;-(.

Thank you Ms Brown.

It has now been over five months, with self-appointed vaccine czar Bill Gates intoning that we will not be able to return to “normal” until the entire global population of 7 billion people has been vaccinated.

Five months indeed. Western elites have provided us with yet more evidence of their willful incompetence, corruption and/or perfidy, in a witches brew of failed policies.

A recent example of a few days ago is discussed in this Medcram video:

With typical clarity, Seheult discusses Convalescent Plasma Therapy, i.e., giving active COVID patients blood from recovered COVID patients. He first discusses its medical basis, and recent research which indicates some efficacy. Then, at about 18:00, he presents “expert” reaction, wherein they toss yet more logs onto the road.

proxies in Washington decided.

…because higher proxies had decided what Washington was going to have decided.

Justifications given for geopolitical decisions have become increasingly nonsensical. In the case of Iraq, even the NeoCons were more apologists than hawks, in the sense that they gave explanations for the invasion, and predictions for developments, that I doubt that they actually believed.

Could Wolfowitz really think the war would pay for itself? Did Rumsfeld believe the war would be over in a couple of weeks, or that we’d be greeted with flowers? The actual failed outcome was fobbed off as some unexpected surprise, but was predictably obvious to numerous observers, and probably to the Neocons as well. It makes more sense to think that they they spouted their BS more to allay public skepticism and promote an otherwise unacceptable agenda, than to express their real expectations.

Maybe OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation), or the appointment of ex-Unocal pipeline proponent Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan were the behind-the-scenes, real motivations, but even prospect of those questionable explanations was slim.

Finally, the Belarusian economy will “reformed” – meaning that whatever can be sold will be sold, then the country will be deindustrialized (like the Ukraine or the Baltic states).

Indeed. The obvious common thread in all this is the Balkanization of independent countries: Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Libya, and the demonization of independent leaders, like Putin, Assad, Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein. It appears that even control of natural resources is secondary to the primacy of raw geopolitical power uber alles. The power center seeking that goal reside at a supranational level where nations and corporations are manipulated instruments of truly sovereign foundations.

Just trolling along:

I sometimes look at political issues through the lens of Karl Popper’s principle of falsifiability. Dershowitz’ behavior in this episode, along with other cited examples, might lead one to propose the hypothesis that he is a self-serving sleazebag. This can be falsified by counter-example(s) where Dershowitz behaves in a way where his sense of integrity overrides his self-interest. Can readers here provide any?

Correction. You are going to get a black woman as President unless you vote for Trump

The dems had an excellent “black woman” candidate for president: Tulsi Gabbard. She did well in the debates they let her attend, and when Google didn’t block searches for her campaign website. Very notably, a should-be-famous exchange with Kamala Harris stopped Harris in her tracks.

Tulsi is intelligent and articulate, served in the armed forces, but too sensible to be tolerated. The DNC carefully hid her candidacy, using debate and rule changes. Google’s algorithm even blocked her campaign site, and Tulsi sued Hillary for claiming she was acting in Russia’s interest. The dems, the media and big tech disappeared Gabbard from public consciousness. So much for the people’s will in today’s Democratic Party. At this time, hardly anyone I talk to even recognizes Tulsi’s name.

Now, long after Tulsi showed the voters how unsavory Kamala was, long enough so that everyone has forgotten the exchange in the debate anyway, the PTB’s are going to circumvent the primary by bringing unsavory Kamala in through the back door. “You are going to get a black woman as President unless you vote for Trump”. Yup. This actually might have been a good thing, but we’ll never know. In any case, the present anointee is an abomination. So much for democracy.

It’s a replay of 2016, except this time, with even more election manipulation, and a DNC supporting an even more ethereal and dysfunctional political platform. Of course Trump will win; what other choice is there?

It produced a mushroom cloud and a shock wave that killed roughly 1950 people, most of them more than 1.5 miles from the epicenter of the blast.

Thanks for this post. I had known that AN fertilizer could explode by itself, so it was unnecessary for it to have been treated or mixed, as some here have suggested.

But I’m especially interested in the “mushroom cloud”. I’ve looked up images of detonations, and the only photos I’ve found with characteristic button-tops are from nuclear, rather than chemical, examples. Can you add more to the description of this one?

Also the ammonium Nitrate was mixed with diesel fuel (ANFO) which is the fuel.

I don’t believe the AN in this case was mixed with diesel, though it would enhance the explosion, as in Oklahoma City, for instance. I do take your point about confinement and packing, though.

But even the Nitrpril “explosive” below seems only to be a pelletized version of vanilla AN, without additives.

This attack on Beirut needs to be seen in the larger context of the Shia-Iran and Sunni variant, Wahhabi-Saudi Arabia conflict for influence in the Mideast region.

Sort of my point: the explanation needs to at least consider operational factors before deciding whether they’re actually relevant, and of course, this may be one. At first glance, I don’t see Sunni involvement in this, but they would be the bag men, and finding their fingerprints in the middle of the Beirut bombing would be as likely as catching Soros at a BLM demonstration. But, if you think I’m missing something, go ahead; make your case and I’ll listen.

To be clear, I was expressing annoyance at the invocation of Occam’s razor, because, as in this case, it’s usually invoked by people who dont’t have the patience to delve into detail, and who are trying to shut down those who do. Occam’s razor should be invoked after a competent effort is made to ascertain the facts, not to shut it down at the outset.

The circumstances surrounding the nautical, financial and storage situations here were unusual in every way, and there’s plenty of motivation. The elephant in the room is the mortal antagonism between Iran-supported Hezbollah and Israel. Overall control of the eastern Mediterranean, whether for oil access (Israel) or trade (China vs US) is another. And of course, asset manipulation followed by vulture buy-ups (like the Deutsche Bank puts on American Airline stocks preceding 911 or Silverstein’s insurance policies) all call for serious consideration (not necessarily confirmation)

To dismiss considering these possibilities as “conspiracy theories” would be to forget how often the US, and especially Israel, have been caught out by whistleblowers, or even by their own bragging. (I shouldn’t neglect Sunni Prince MBS of Saudi Arabia.) While “thought experiments” to assess the likelihood of various possibilities, and to provoke ideas, is a respected activity in the best science, our Ministry of Truth forbids it in political matters.

Occam’s Razor people. The simplest explanation is almost without exception the correct explanation. In this case, just one word: negligence.

Occam said simplest, not the most simplistic.

I went to your site to have a look, and found that yt had taken down one of your videos. Just wondering if you’ve considered a bitchute account.

I benefited from the crash; it does not follow that I caused it.

You’re discussion addresses only one leg of the motive-means-opportunity test. You’d fail, but Israel wouldn’t. While that does make Israel a suspect in this potential crime, we probably both agree with your underlying point, that a bit more evidence is necessary before technical conviction.