Twitter & Facebook are censoring us – but our subscribe feature is back!
Hey all – A couple of updates.
1. A LOT of you have been contacting us with concerns about our subscribe feature not working. We’re pleased to announce we have that function back and you can find it on the front page HERE. It’s not a perfect system, but it will allow you to keep in touch with us and our output during these difficult times!
2. As you may know we are currently under sustained attack from various ironically-named ‘fact-check’ websites and their social media allies.
PolitiFact have launched an incoherent and error-filled ‘rebuttal’ on our article Covid19 PCR tests are scientifically meaningless. Leadstories.com and Healthfeedback.org have both published critiques of “No one has died of the coronavirus”, and Newsguard are currently planning an ‘investigation’ into our editors and our coverage both of Covid19 and 9/11.
We will be publishing our correspondence with Newsguard in the next week or so as well as a response to PolitiFact. We also understand Rosemary Frei and Patrick Corbett are planning a response, which, of course, we will give space to here.
Coincidentally Facebook and Twitter have moved against us in unison as if they were one entity. Facebook now gives a warning about some of our content and links to the very poor PolitiFact piece. Twitter offers up their standard warning that our site “may be unsafe”.
Neither site actually blocks access, but the warning is designed to make it appear to be doing so, and most people fail to see the link in small text that allows you to proceed to our site. Inevitably this is impacting in our social media reach.
To help counter this you can share our articles through email and direct messaging, but please continue to do so on social media also – adding a comment to the effect the link is NOT blocked and can still be accessed. We don’t want to make their job as self-appointed censors any easier than it has to be.
More on this issue coming soon…
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When we arrived 3 months ago before The Storm. It was like Heaven. It was even more Beautiful than The Maldives. I said to my Son. I would like to see the place Harold Wilson chosed – cos I had seen him before in Oldham on a Fruit Box and I really liked him. I was not old enough to vote for him, but if I had been I would have
It was very calm when we arrived on Our Son’s Sailing Boat in August 2020 It looked exactly like this.
We all were just so happy to see this, and experience this, and run on the deserted sandy beaches with our Grandkids. It got a bit rough later..but the gannets were awesome. They were the dive bombers. I had never seen anything like it.
https://ibb.co/j8gBphM
Tony
“We don’t want to make their job as self-appointed censors any easier than it has to be”
The real issue with all this social media is that they are private corporations and have no requirement to keep an open house. They can change their T&Cs whenever they want and censor or block whatever they want.
Even OffG does this, as they’re entitled to, in order to keep their community in good order as they deem appropriate.
This means that people shouldn’t place such reliance on Twitter etc to spread their message. It appears to me that they generally do so because it’s financially more profitable than other methods due to click and ad revenues. The sooner we all disconnect from these mega platforms the better it will be.
Well, doesn’t that just cut deep to the heart, of the massive cynical heart, of this whole global fascismo-corporatismo Hypocrisy!
THEY can harvest all our data with more impunity than available to lab rats (all whilst being some of the biggest tax dodgers in history by the way) and yet as a virtual global institution with no borders and even fewer protections of our civil liberties, while WE must abide by their lashes. Or simply cede the battlefield, hors de combat?
It simply highlights this latest global plandemic of class warfare, or rather THEIR complete corporatismo unfettered privileges.
___________
“The practical tendency of all trade and commerce today is to form big combinations, which are often more impersonal, more imperial, and more international, than many a communist commonwealth.”
~~ G. K. Chesterton (a century ago)
“The sooner we all disconnect from these mega platforms the better it will be.”
Indeed. A blockade between those media and this one actually feels safe… And those few lost sheep from the herd out there have enough opportunity to find this site if other alternative media exchange links to each other’s sites. Being more difficult to access also stimulates individual inquisitiveness, which is the kind of desired public. Besides, popularity is the surest death blow to quality.
It is absolutely clear to anyone with the remotest knowledge of molecular biology (for the record, I did 10 years of research molecular biology from 1986 to 1997, including carrying out literally hundreds, if not thousands, of PCR reactions), that a PCR reaction, be it RT-PCR using RNA as an initial template, or standard PCR detecting DNA molecules, is an analytical tool to detect the presence of specific nucleic acid sequences. It is not a technique which per se diagnoses a disease.
Of course, in certain diseases, RT PCR or PCR may be used to characterise individual disease. For example, PCR could be used to identify specific mutations in cancer patients (e.g. the BRCA family of genes in hereditary breast cancer; mutations in RB1 in retinoblastoma patients; detections of well-characterised mutations of a multitude of genes in Autism Spectrum conditions etc etc). But the diagnosis of the disease is almost never done using PCR: it is done using clinical measurements. PCR may be used to characterise the patient more thoroughly, but it is quite rare that the first thing you will do is a PCR analysis.
PCR can also be used to identify in advance the susceptibility of individual people to certain hereditary diseases. Huntingdon’s Chorea is a good example of that, where it is possible to test the young to determine if they have inherited the relevant genotypes in families where the disease is known to be prevalent.
But I think it is indisputable currently that the following is true of ‘Covid19’:
It is quite conceivable that these ‘symptoms’ of ‘Covid19’, which are neither uniform nor exactly characterised, are caused by things other than SARS-CoV2. No-one has been inhumane enough to expose humans to purified SARS-CoV2 virions (as far as I am aware, I am not sure anyone has actually purified virions just yet), so we cannot say what, exactly, the role of SARS-CoV2 is just yet.
The epidemiology of SARS-CoV2 infection certainly shows that the virus is transmissible and can traced back in lineage form though known contacts. But as most of us will barely get ill despite becoming infected, it goes without saying that infection per se is not really the important step.
What IS the important step which causes real illness rather than a mild cold/flu?
Is it spread of the virus to different cell types? Is it the lack of immune competence in susceptible patients? Are there certain genetic profiles which make sufferers uniquely susceptible?
All that can be said with certainty is that viral infection with SARS-CoV2 may be necessary for full Covid19 to develop, but it is certainly not sufficient.
Think on this: HPV16 and HPV18 are known to be associated with cervical cancer. Yet when scientists examined prepubertal young children in the late 1980s, they found widespread presence of HPV DNA using PCR in the reproductive tracts of young girls. None of those girls were ill, none had any signs of developing cervical cancer. None even had genital warts.
You will find similar stories around Epstein Barr virus, originally isolated from a lymphoma patient in Africa by a doctor called Burkitt (the tumour type was named Burkitt’s lymphoma). In most people EBV sits around doing precisely nothing.
I really wish the MEEDJA would stop trying to make out that everything we need to know is known about Covid19. The detailed dissection of what goes on to cause serious disease is still clouded in mystery.
Using the logic of current nonsense, you would declare that every smoker is going to die of lung cancer and a smoker coughing their lungs up would immediately be diagnosed as having a tumour.
Any idiot knows that that is not the case.
Thanks Rhys for an excellent and thought provoking piece. I agree with much of what you say here.
What IS the important step which causes real illness rather than a mild cold/flu?
I have been reading that T cells may be an important factor here and that the prevalence of T cells in young people may be protecting them from becoming infected by the virus and/or protecting them from developing symptoms of disease.
The preavalence of T cells apparently diminishes with age, so older people are more susceptible to infection and disease.
The fact that many may already have innate immunity also means that the threshold for herd immunity may be a lot lower than has previously been believed.
An article on the subject has been published:
https://immunology.sciencemag.org/content/5/49/eabd6160
Thanks form this link John. My favorite quote:
I will take whatever odds Vegas is offering on a “yes” answer to that question.
Interesting link.
if you claimed a set of symptoms was caused by wearing yellow t shirts it would be easy enough to identify a chain of transmission since most people have had contact with a yellow tshirt owner. the theory finds its own ‘evidence’.
That is very comparable to the “logic” of this plandemic so far.
A guy in Florida dies of injuries from wrecking a motorcycle and is counted as a Covid death because some months ago he tested positive ….
What logic? There is a mission to twist facts to fit their agenda.
That’s it.
WAKE UP, PEOPLE!
And, breaking news, where are all the virions (that adults spread so readily in the earlier, upper respiratory tract stage of the disease) in children who have tested positive but seem to be non-infectious? Lo and behold, in their shit, ?, and present there for much longer periods of time?
Citation? In this place citation is a total waste of lifetime, no SARS-CoV-2 necessarily involved, but a bit of Matthew 7:7 wouldn’t hurt the open minded as a reminder that and it would be positively beneficial for the cognitive development of those more afflicted Off-Guardianistas who tend to starve if they can’t suck their food for thought as predigested pap direct from Bad Nanny’s lobes.
Which is quite separate from the question: just what is going on in the guts of kiddies who defecate SARS-CoV-2 and how will it affect their grades and susceptibilities to other and perhaps not so separate transmissable problems in years to come?
A little tribute to my “lovers” on this thread. A song quote:
“Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you”
Territorial Pissings, Nirvana 🙂
Actually, I always thought Kurt Cobain said “doesn’t”, but I was never a huge fan and hey, who cares if I can spel ?
(OMG, I must be compleeetely stupid not to know how to spell spell !!!!!)
I prefer the other saying which may come from P K Dick: “A paranoiac is someone who’s just figured out what’s really going on!”
I rediscovered this great book in my storage recently (I’d been looking online for the equally great Antonin Artaud quote for quite some time but came up empty) and his memoir about his renegade dissidence among his British psychiatrist colleagues had a deep impact on me when I read it 10 years ago, in refreshingly all the right ways, and served as confirmation of many things I’d long furtively suspected (e.g. your suspected ‘Philip K. Dick’ aperçu):
EXCERPT FROM ~~ “WISDOM, MADNESS, AND FOLLY: the Making of a Psychiatrist 1927-1957”:
‘Antonin Artaud:
“You can say all you want about the mental health of Van Gogh who, during his lifetime, cooked only one of his hands and other than that did no more than cut off his left ear…
….present-day life goes on in its old atmosphere of prurience, of anarchy, of disorder, of delirium, of dementia, of chronic lunacy, of bourgeois inertia, of psychic anomaly (for it isn’t man but the world that has become abnormal), of deliberate dishonesty and downright hypocrisy, of a mean contempt for anything that shows breeding,
of the claim of an entire order based on the fulfilment of a primitive injustice,
in short, of organized crime.
Things are bad because the sick conscience now has a vital interest in not getting over it’s sickness.
So a sick society invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain visionaries whose faculties of divination disturbed it.”
This is psychosis. I had been trained to diagnose myself psychotic.’
______________£4£&$4$
— Excerpt from “Wisdom, Madness, and Folly” by R. D. Laing, a most penetrating memoir by a dissident British psychiatrist who details “case histories” of raving lunatics he has known at close range (professionally) and who –“after further review”– turned out to be much less mad than they “appeared”.
Elsewhere (“Knots” — I believe) R. D. Laing has said notably, “Even broken hearts can heal, if we have the heart to let them.”
Excellent! I like that bit “So a sick society invented psychiatry to defend itself against the investigations of certain visionaries whose faculties of divination disturbed it.”
I think I’d phrase it more simply: “So a sick society invented psychiatry to defend itself against being rumbled.”
Yes your brit use brings it more tightly on topic, too.
You have “faculties of divination” that disturb it, yourself, since that was the relevance to this thread, and the Scottish Supershrink, Laing who first began to notice faculties of misdivination among his ’50s colleagues after the war, and their lack of a troubled conscience for things like massive electroshock (I had one genius friend, tough guy, who had survived the Gestapo as an 8 year old only to emigrate to the USA and have our mad scientist shrinks give him many jolts: we’re talking the kind that gave Elsa Lanchester her frizzed coiffures and startled smilse in “Bride of Frankenstein”).
It wasn’t until the last ten years, after studying the details of things like the IRIS CHANG “apparent” suicide and her brief semi-quarantine at an Army Hospital just prior (with adjusted meds there) that I began to ruminate (then rumble) how psychiatry’s primary purpose is control, which didnt “shock” me given that the whole American culture is insidiously militarized in toto, A to Z.
Then I came upon the Laing memoir and his spiking disaffection with his government militsry shrink background, then Jane Mayer’s chapter on “Weaponizing Philanthropy” and my sketch was complete, everything in USA INC. is weaponized.
Everyone’s an agent, everything’s a psyop, and all of American life is a “Seamless Garment” of conspiracies.
At that nadir of their zenith, I take a slow stroll back to more credible stances.
But not that long. As a stroll (hence slow). It’s a much longer walk, the long way home, from the other end.
In short, it makes many times more sense than being too easily taken in. Given how often it happens, these days, I find everything suspect.
But I had to look up your use of the word, the first time I had suspected a distinctly new use since I saw West Side Story as a lad and found out that it was something The Jets and Sharks did on Saturday nights in the ‘hoods of NYC.
I learned a bit of of brit slang in my months on Iona in the ’70s Hebrides, and my Scottish housemate Archibald explained some and what “sussed” meant. I must have brought it home with me to California like a Magic Virus since no one knew it here, then, but now they do.
But I had to look up your use of “rumbled”.
Sussed. In short.
The more slangs change, the more they stay the same!
I suppose it’s natural to assume you are talking to folk who will understand your colloquialisms because you assume we’re all “in the same room” and forget the net goes round the world. Yeah “rumbled” means “found out”.
Brit English and American English make a curious correspondence e.g. For “vagina”, Brits say “fanny” which, for Americans, means the backside referred to by Brits as “bum” by which Americans mean “tramp” or “hobo”.
And I recently looked for an illustration for “chips” and kept getting crisps which Americans call “potato chips”. I had to type “french fries”.
And so it goes on and on!
Indeed. Divided by a common language.
But we are richer for the exchange rate: I know “rumbled” now, and had NO idea that fanny was more localized for Brits than Yanks, though I’m hip to bum.
I spent a lot of time in London, twelve trips since ’69, and I also lived in a hostel here in HB for some months with a lot of UK blokes, surfers and ruggers, from all over.
But the education here just at this site, in the last couple years has taught me more than all those other stints. So I’m ready to unleash it again, back by the Thames.
Though I have wearied of the islands’ fondness for “spot on” simply because I’ve heard it, time out of mind, unrenovated, globally (other than North America) since I was in 1950s knee pants. LOL
Well, were used to it.
The confusion can be amusing. There are words used regularly in America which are swear words in the UK: “bugger” and “wanker” – the latter is actually a surname in the States. Anyone by that name visiting Britland can expect any number of sniggers!
No less an authority than DEVO sang those words nigh 40 years gone by ~~
“Not a wanker or a banker
Not afraid to take a risk…”
And Mark Mothersbaugh hails from NorthEast Ohio, no less a Yank, er, than that. A great song, pretty local, but maybe they just prized “wanker” for rhyme, on loan from London.
In fact we sang (I know of your love of music from these threads) a concert in the countryside not far from their haunts, in Boston Mills, and the program couldn’t get more Yankee: the abridged version of Porgy and Bess by Gershwin. It was the summer Blossom Festival ’98, and the hundredth birthday celebration of George G, an American genius if ever it was. The critic in his program notes had an interesting tale: Artur Rodszinski had been reading the unfinished score at the Steinway in Gershwin’s NYC flat, and prevailed upon him by saying, “Gee, George you’ve just got to let me debut this in Cleveland!” They were good friends, Gershwin agreed, or so goes the local lore, but when his New York backers got wind of that transaction, they threatened to defund it unless it had a Broadway opening. Clevelanders got to lick their wounds for 40 years until the superb Lorin Maazel performed and recorded it there at Severance Hall, in ’76).
But I feel confident in the recent deep state etymology that some of these brit idioms made the Atlantic crossing with their meaning intact, on loan, courtesy of the British Punk Rock scene of yesteryear.
I’ll have to look up the family name in a phone book, I’ve yet to see it here.
Twitter, as a word, is a UK product, no?
(NB: Heavy-handed on topic segué alert)
I recall that someone with the name of Thomas Wanker kept coming up in the end credits of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.
Cf. American culture, I had a visitor from the states who I’m afraid was every bit the cliched big-mouthed yank and a right pain in the arse. (Or “ass” if you prefer!) He kept boasting about that Yankee “can-do attitood”. However – I have to (grudgingly) admit he did have a point. Except I wouldn’t say “can-do” (which might still suggest subservience) as much as “do-it-yourself”. I do indeed love music and I like those American “maverick” composers like Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles etc. and what they highlight is an essential difference between Europe and America. In Europe (especially Britain), there is a chronic sense of deference towards culture – a sense of “Well here’s some musical material but we better wait till somebody qualified comes along and tells us what to do”. In America, it’s more a case of “Well what’s this stuff here? No point in waiting for instructions. No-one’s coming. And we couldn’t care less even if they did. Let’s just bang it together and see what happens. And if we don’t like it, we’ll take it apart again and bang it together a different way!”
Well, yes, that imago is what we genteel poor stateside used to call “The Ugly American” though I havent heard the term, like many words now clinically or surgically removed from our reduced post-Weimar lexicon, for many years. Which means:
A. Rupert either has the clout or the technology to do such surgery, in between “surges”, or…
B. It would be oxymoronic to have it any other way.
But like you say, and I concur with both thumbs, and my Yankee big toes, we are nothing if not DYI.
I know that’s my story, Ive been winging it since 16.
I was given the privilege through my UCI piano prof, 50 years ago when he chaired the dept. he’d inaugurated at the UCI opening early ’60s — the brilliant Arnold Juda (brother of Jo Juda of Concertgebouw) — to sit in, as a fly on the wall, and audit the Uni composition courses. The Dean of composition was Peter Odegäard, who was a self-styled enfant terrible, huge wide biker who wore chains on his belt loop, butt-kickin boots and apparently rode a Harley (the sine qua non of BadBoy(z)ishness in the USA, trumping everything gentler, with but a small but orthodox application from everyone for its permission to be). Well, I’m a(r)ssuming the Hog was parked nearby, since he cultivated a Hell’s Angel aura as at least a style, whatever the substance. It seemed, as part of a strategy to “épater la bourgeousie” and, perhaps, a distraction from the deeper values of his music: “Nothing to hear folks, just move along.” A minimalist. I was at a U orchestra concert where his work wss causing the night’s buzz: an exact replica of GFH “Hallelujah Chorus” with the only alteration being his substitution of the eponymous word with “COP-U-LA-TION!”
“Minimalism”. That passed for art (the Jury of his peers is STILL out, on whether it’s music…hmmm…) …. in Warhol’s realm back then.
I saw him lumbering through the commons of the music courtyard, and aporoached him. Could he direct me the right way, what, where, should I start with writing music?
He gave me an answer not counterintuitive and yet in line with your take on Americana: “You want to compose? Just start writing. Start composing.”
I had already done a little of that but stammered, “Yes, but what about what about…?!!”
He patiently explained, “No, really, if you have any ideas, just preserve them however you want, and worry about the rest of all that whenever…”
Considering I was starting at 20, that’s 140 in Dawg Years, it was actually deanly brilliant advice.
But there’s also more to it……… ……… …
About 20 years later I was ushering at the world premiere of the Emerson Concerto by Charles Ives, in Cleveland Severance Hall reconstructed brilliantly from chaotic notes by David Porter (of my hometown, or backyard, of Santa Ana, where Philip K. Dick spent his last years in Ca.) Dick, Porter, and Odegaard, all proles in styles and vibes. I bumped into Porter after the premiere, he came alone in a pizza parlor downstairs at my place, next to CIM, conservatory second to non. The corner is sick with world class musicians, I bumped into Pierre Boulez at a coke machine, always very friendly, as Id seen him backstage at UCLA 10 years prior. And others. I would often be the only one to recognize them.
And I recognized Porter. We talked a few minutes but he excused himself, asking for compassion, “Please forgive me, but Ive been doing nothing all week but smiling in the faces of rich society ladies as they come up and say, “Thank you so much for your bewtifull bewtifull Reconstruction.” He could have been an Odegaard clone: full beard, long pony tail, all the Hunter S. Thompson biker profile. And yet a scholar of the musical quandaries if the Ives piece that had baffled musicoligists and critics for 70 years, until he neatly unravelled threm, in his Reconstruction if the amazing thorny work.
I think my tuxedo threw him off, but that’s just the uniform. I think he got it, as he smiled the next day when he saw me at Alan Feinberg’s solo recital of Ives. Sunday as he walked away hed confided that Beavis and Butthead were his and his wife’s favorite show.
But I thought of these American eminences when you wrote of American DIY.
They are entered in evidence toward a proof of that.
Here’s a very very interesting interview with Alan Feinberg, who is a dazzling pianist. I met the Israeli Shulamit Ran a lifetime ago, after a performance of her ambitious avant garde work “Oh the Chimneys” on the campus of U of Chicago. ’74. It was the only interesting work, and how, on a menu of 4 or 5 and I exclaimed in my fanboyishness, “WHO wrote THAT?!” Well the composer is world famous now, the others that night, allforgotten, so my instincts were SPOT ON (!)
I asked around, and after some searching, someone pointed me out to the composer and we met. I expected somebody like Babbitt or Piston, 100 years old or so. I was confused, not knowing what a Shulamit RAN even was, and glanced everywhere but in front of me, at the composer: a great beauty about my age , 20s. “Hello, yes, I’m Shulamit RAN, last I checked.” I started gushing my praises , in my collector’s 5x beaver Stetson, and the whole effect was to make her giggle uncontrollably. Not meanly, just trippingly.
She was with her mother, Israeli. She may have seen beyond the boyfan, or goyfan, but it was troubling. Amazing musician and composer. Not Stockhausen calibre, but not far. I think she still teaches at U of C.
But I squeezed that story in, in our ongoing analysis of “USA Culture at the Crossroads with Covid”, as an example of the flip side of the renegade DYI composer. She was academically trained to the hilt, also ultra-avantgarde, but would look ridiculous on a Harley .
I took my Stetson off and left, just four days later I was in Germany at Beethoven’s Bonn birthplace, March 26 (a date for so many things, including the late Pierre’s birthday) and marvelling, alone in the museum of heirlooms, at his 1820 John Broadwood, wof London, when a docent of some kindcame in and let me play it! My backpack was behind one of Ludwig’s poplars in his garden, concealing an orchestral score of the 9th Symphony, as a sacramental on the pilgrimage.
Imagine. We heard Feinberg play Ives on a Hamburg Steinweg, October of ’94, that Dohnanyi had handpicked from its factory in the years, right about that time, when his brother was Mayor, there (and of course, their father Hans is the Berlin Judge who was hanged for putting the dud bomb on Adolf’s plane, as a Weisse 🌹 Rose collaborator.) Here is the fascinating interview with Alan Feinberg, with its commentary about David Porter, hippie biker and DIY Ives scholar and strict Reconstructionist.
Only in America. (At least we got that. As one apology.)
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/feinberg.html
Well I can’t compete with your name dropping. I once saw George Melly’s retreating back in Edinburgh – and I didn’t even know it was him till a mate told me. In fact, I didn’t even know who GM was anyway. Oh, and I forget SIR James MacMillan who I think I’ve mentioned before. That was before he started blow-jobbing the Standpoint magazine crowd.
Anyway – times change all the time. The “American maverick” age I refer to (Ives, Cowell etc.) is long gone. And I suppose when John Cage gives you silence (i.e. whatever sounds occur in that timeframe) there’s not much further you can go!
Incidentally, there was a story that when Henry Cowell was jailed for “improper behaviour”, Ives dropped all contact with him. But it seems that it was Ives’s wife who was the shunner and Ives was just publicly going along with her but secretly still supporting Henry. How times have changed.
[AWKWARD RE-POST SPOILER ALERT: I only spent about 3 minutes correcting typos in the original, if that, and it timed out. I get the idea that attacks on the site are causing the wrestling match with edits! Apologies:]
Well, that imago is what we genteel poor stateside used to call “The Ugly American” though I havent heard the term, like many words now clinically or surgically removed from our reduced post-Weimar lexicon, for many years. Which means:
A. Rupert either has the clout or the technology to do such surgery, in between “surges”, or…
B. It would be oxymoronic to have it any other way.
But like you say, and I concur with both thumbs, and my Yankee big toes, we are nothing if not DYI.
I know that’s my story, Ive been winging it since 16.
I was given the privilege through my UCI piano prof, 50 years ago when he chaired the dept. he’d inaugurated at the UCI opening early ’60s — the brilliant Arnold Juda (brother of Jo Juda of Concertgebouw) — to sit in, as a fly on the wall, and audit the Uni composition courses. The Dean of composition was Peter Odegäard, who was a self-styled enfant terrible, huge wide biker who wore chains on his belt loop, butt-kickin boots and apparently rode a Harley (the sine qua non of BadBoy(z)ishness in the USA, trumping everything gentler, with but a small but orthodox application from everyone for its permission to be). Well, I’m a(r)ssuming the Hog was parked nearby, since he cultivated a Hell’s Angel aura as at least a style, whatever the substance. It seemed, as part of a strategy to “épater la bourgeousie” and, perhaps, a distraction from the deeper values of his music: “Nothing to hear folks, just move along.” A minimalist. I was at a U orchestra concert where his work wss causing the night’s buzz: an exact replica of GFH “Hallelujah Chorus” with the only alteration being his substitution of the eponymous word with “COP-U-LA-TION!”
“Minimalism”. That passed for art (the Jury of his peers is STILL out, on whether it’s music…hmmm…) …. in Warhol’s realm back then.
I saw him lumbering through the commons of the music courtyard, and aporoached him. Could he direct me the right way, what, where, should I start with writing music?
He gave me an answer not counterintuitive and yet in line with your take on Americana: “You want to compose? Just start writing. Start composing.”
I had already done a little of that but stammered, “Yes, but what about what about…?!!”
He patiently explained, “No, really, if you have any ideas, just preserve them however you want, and worry about the rest of all that whenever…”
Considering I was starting at 20, that’s 140 in Dawg Years, it was actually deanly brilliant advice.
But there’s also more to it……… ……… …
About 20 years later I was ushering at the world premiere of the Emerson Concerto by Charles Ives, in Cleveland Severance Hall reconstructed brilliantly from chaotic notes by David Porter (of my hometown, or backyard, of Santa Ana, where Philip K. Dick spent his last years in Ca.) Dick, Porter, and Odegaard, all proles in styles and vibes. I bumped into Porter after the premiere, he came alone in a pizza parlor downstairs at my place, next to CIM, conservatory second to none. The corner is sick with world class musicians, I bumped into Pierre Boulez at a coke machine, always very friendly, as Id seen him backstage at UCLA 10 years prior. And others. I would often be the only one to recognize them. History-saturated knights of the Muse. (Dohnanyi was named Philharmonia maestro then, a year before, but he was too big to be caught on the pavements or aisles, plus his Weisse Rose lifelong albatross.)
And I recognized Porter. We talked a few minutes but he excused himself, asking for compassion and 🍕 pizza, “Please forgive me, but I’ve been doing nothing all week but smiling in the faces of rich society ladies as they come up and corner me to say, “OH Thank you so much for your bewtifull bewtifull Reconstruction.” He could have been an Odegaard clone: full beard, long pony tail, all the Hunter S. Thompson biker profile. And yet a scholar of the musical quandaries of the Ives piece that had baffled musicoligists and critics for 70 years, until he neatly unravelled threm, in his Reconstruction of the amazing and thorny work.
I think my tuxedo threw him off, but that’s just the uniform. I think he got it later, as he smiled the next day when he saw me at Alan Feinberg’s solo recital of Ives. Sunday as he’d walked away he’d confided that Beavis and Butthead were his and his wife’s favorite show.
But I thought of these American eminences when you wrote of American DIY.
They are entered in evidence toward a proof of that.
Here’s a very very interesting interview with Alan Feinberg, who is a dazzling pianist. I met the Israeli Shulamit Ran mentioned with his name a lifetime ago, after a performance of her ambitious avant garde work “Oh the Chimneys” on the campus of U of Chicago. ’74. It was the only interesting work, and How, on a menu of 4 or 5 and I exclaimed in my fanboyishness, “WHO wrote THAT?!” Well the composer is world famous now, the others that night, all forgotten, so my instincts were SPOT ON (!)
I asked around, and after some searching, someone pointed me out to the composer and we met. I expected somebody like Babbitt or Piston, 100 years old or so and hunched like Igor at yhe podium. I was confused, not knowing what a Shulamit RAN even was, and glanced everywhere but in front of me, at the composer: a great beauty about my age then , 20s. “Hello, yes, I’m Shulamit RAN, last I checked.” I started gushing my praises , in my collector’s 5x beaver Stetson, and the whole effect was to make her giggle uncontrollably. Not meanly, just trippingly.
She was with her mother, Israeli. She may have seen beyond the boyfan, or goyfan, but it was troubling. Amazing musician and composer. Not Stockhausen calibre, but not far. I think she still teaches at U of C.
But I squeezed that story in, in our ongoing analysis of “USA Culture at the Crossroads with Covid”, as an example of the flip side of the renegade DYI composer. She was academically trained to the hilt, also ultra-avantgarde, but would look ridiculous on a Harley .
I took my Stetson off and left, just four days later I was in Germany at Beethoven’s Bonn birthplace, March 26 (a date for so many things, including the late Pierre’s birthday) and marvelling, alone in the museum of his heirlooms, at his 1820 John Broadwood of London, when a docent of some kind came in and let me play it!
My backpack all that time was left behind one of Ludwig’s poplars in his garden, concealing an orchestral score of the 9th Symphony, as a sacramental on the pilgrimage.
Imagine. We heard Feinberg play Ives on a Hamburg Steinweg, October of ’94, that Dohnanyi had handpicked from its factory in the years, right about that time, when his brother was Mayor, there (and of course, their father Hans is the Berlin Judge who was hanged for putting the dud bomb on Adolf’s plane, as a Weisse 🌹 Rose collaborator.) Here is the fascinating interview with Alan Feinberg, with its commentary about David Porter, hippie biker and DIY Ives scholar and strict Reconstructionist.
Only in America. (At least we got that. As one apology.)
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/feinberg.htm
http://members.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionaryclassic/
Excellent! I’ll need to add that to my favourites.
Nice. As Lewis Carroll also wrote, writ large as a wall mural above the reception at the Long Beach California Main Library: “When I choose a word it means exactly what I choose it to mean.”
Spoken like a true mathematician, semioticized.
‘“Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you””
The I-Phone Idiot segment of the great herd that is humanity are in the end the main users of Facebook and Twitter , a socially accepted/encouraged form of masturbation , a somewhat arbitrary grouping of global population which can be characterized as sheeple , whose response to almost every issue is baaa ?
Almost never use FB or Twitter (99.9% of ops). They are innately scandalous and suspect, innate.
Robot Zuck has plans to own you. All. Their site-wide fear of truth reeks from their thinly veiled assaults upon y’all.
Since most of my contemporaries are dead and communication with the newer generations becomes increasingly difficult as history is rewritten and the definitions of most word altered to suit todays tyrants. I see no reason to ever use either twitter or facebook ?
Solid!
I met Ray Bradbury 15 years ago (his “Fahrenheit 451” is iconic in these regards). His wife of many decades, Marguerite, had recently died and he himself was confined to a wheelchair after a stroke.
He called his telephone directory then “The Book of the Dead”.
He was talking to our small group of 20 some at “The Cannery” restaurant on Balboa Bay, nearby, and signed an anniversary re-issue of Fahrenheit, “”JOHN!”
A photo op, he smiled and nodded when I mentioned growing up early 1960s as a 10 year old around Norman Corwin, “…he’s great…” (Norman had got his publishing friends in NYC to collect RB’s pulp scifi magazine short stories together into an anthology they then dubbed “The Martian Chronicles” , and thus launched Bradbury’s career in book form in the early 1950s.
When this locked down madness first hit us, all the worldwide sanitizing somehow called to immediate mind his story about the “instant OCD” murderer, and his monomaniacal fixation, in one of those stories, “The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl”. If you know it, you may see the point. It had once long ago chilled a late night in wee hours reading it, in fanboy-hood. And here it was once more, by way of redux this mid-March, with its macabre point!)
I must have read it in a ’60s anthology OF his anthologies, one of which was “The Golden Apples of the Sun” now come to think of it.
Voilà:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fruit_at_the_Bottom_of_the_Bowl
(I had just bought, “The Vintage Bradbury” when it first came off the presses in thev’60s, it also had the Martian Chronicles, hence the old memory conflation.
Almost all of them are, sweet or sour, sardonic sermons on the dystopic tortures of this present day, foreseen by him 70 years past.)
It shows the staying power of the story, that it has its own wiki now (well, ok then, plus a serialized version of the various iterations of my first sweatshirts, also just now appearing at Wikipedia LOL!)
I thought of the story after our YMCA reopened in July after months of totally meaningless closure. I was standing alone stark naked in an empty locker room (the showers aren’t slated to reopen til mid-September, for no discernible reason).
The head Director had just walked in with spray bottle and cloth in hand to polish the mirror.
Ill never forget Jimmy’s startled expression in the mirror, as he polished, when he glanced at me, arched eyebrows, as I updated him on the recent hidden history of the Magic Virus: that Medicare was paying hospitals $39,000 reimbursements for ventilators.
I think that sold him on my conspiracy theories, as a whole.
He had just had his first child a year or so ago, after he had survived, a year or so before that, “The Las Vegas Shooting”.
His life reads like an anthology of Bradbury-esque psyops.
Bradbury had told us that his inspiration for the Mechanical Dog in “Fahrenheit 451” came after a late night walk in early 50s LA (off topic, off-guardianly, but I had just seen my first light of day, nearby, at Good Samaritan Hospital, 6th and Shatto) when an LAPD b&w police cruiser rolled up alongside and asked him, “What are you doing?”
He was walking as therapy for a late night nano-episode of writer’s block, and stared into their flashlight beam, “Well, I’m putting one foot in front of the other.” They stared back. (LAPD has always been wonderful that way, Terry Gilliam recounts how he moved from nearby in LA to London and joined Monty Python, after a similar wee hours encounter with them. By then, it was late 1960, war tension was mounting, he was a longhaired cartoonist: he smarted off to their questions, not wisely but I had done similar things to them then, and they beat the daylights out of him. I was luckier, but came close a couple times: even the air then was deeply divided. Gilliam was provoked, and when archly harassed about his pony tail, archly answered that he made more in a month as a cartoonist than their yearly salaries.
Many fisticuffs later, he reminisced that he moved to England soon after, adding, “That may explain why so many buildings in America are still standing. I decided I was a better cartoonist than a bomb maker.”
Anyhow, some of that context helps frame why Bradbury thought up soon after his scifi device of the relentless Mechanical Dog, as he complained to our group of fans that it was a core image of his plot for “Fahrenheit 451” but was left out of the film by Truffaut unaccountably (who did a great job anyway, and who summoned up so much of the bizarre Covid ethos, thru Oscar Werner’s great turn acting).
Only in “America”. Nay, only in Hollywood!
FINAL DIRECTOR’S CUT OF PREVIOUS POST:
I thought of the story once our YMCA in HB reopened in early July after months of totally meaningless closure (and now abruptly re-closed by Newsom, then re-opened outdoors in the parking lots, again, by Newsom, all just as meaninglessly).
I was standing alone stark naked in an empty locker room (the showers aren’t slated to reopen til mid-September, postponed for no discernible reason).
The head Director had just walked in with spray bottle and cloth in hand to polish the mirror….
I won’t forget Jimmy’s startled expression, in the mirror, as he polished –corporate-mandated “Deep Cleaning” closure each day for an hour at 1pm– he glanced at my reflection, his wasshocked, arched eyebrows, as I updated him on the recent hidden history of the Magic Virus: that Medicare was paying hospitals $39,000 reimbursements for ventilators.
I think that sold him on my conspiracy theories, as a whole. His expression was simply shocked for the briefest moment.
He had just had his first child a year or so ago, after precariously surviving, a year or so before that, “The Las Vegas Shooting”.
His life lately reads like an anthology of Bradbury-esque psyops!
Bradbury had told us in 2005 that his inspiration for the Mechanical Dog in “Fahrenheit 451” came after a late night walk in early 50s LA (off topic, off-guardianly, but I had just seen my first light of day, nearby, at Good Samaritan Hospital, 6th and Shatto) when an LAPD b&w police cruiser rolled up alongside and asked him, “What are you doing?”
He was walking as therapy for a late night nano-episode of writer’s block, and he just stared into their flashlight beam, “Well, I’m putting one foot in front of the other.” They stared back. (LAPD has always been wonderful that way, Terry Gilliam recounts how he moved from nearby in LA to London and joined Monty Python, after a similar wee hours encounter with them. By then, it was 15 years after, late 1960s, Vietnam war tension was daily mounting, I remember it well, at military school, and he was employed as a longhaired cartoonist: he smarted off to their questions, not wisely –but I get it, I had done similar things to them then that very year, myself– and then they beat the daylights out of him. I was luckier, but came close a couple times: even the air then was deeply divided. Gilliam was provoked, and when archly harassed about his pony tail, etc etc, he archly answered that he made more in a month as a cartoonist than their yearly salaries.
As an LA D.A. smirked to me at my telling of that tale, “He flunked the Attitude Test.”
Many (of their) fisticuffs later…he reminisced that he moved to England soon after, adding, “That may explain why so many buildings in America are still standing. I decided I was a better cartoonist than a bomb maker.”
Anyhow, some of that context helps frame why Bradbury thought up soon after his own episode the scifi device of the relentless Mechanical Dog, as he complained to our group of fans that it was a core image of his plot for “Fahrenheit 451” but was left out of the film by Truffaut unaccountably (FT did a great job anyway, summoning up so much of the bizarre Covid ethos, thru Oscar Werner’s great turn acting).
Only in “America”. Nay, only
in Hollywood!
That use of the word brings to mind the early frames of “IDIOCRACY” by JudgeMental Films. Our hero Colin Wilson arrives in the future and knocks on the door of the first future ijjit on his path, and gets the courteously dismissive reply, “”Batin’.”
I would never use Twitter or Facebook anyway. They are data harvesting operations for the US state.
But not for the Trump administration, which FakeBook and Twatter oppose virulently, thanks to their leftist zombie owners.
They are the private sector arm of ‘The Utah Data Center’ (aka “MISSION DATA REPOSITORY”) which only needs 2 million gallons of water a day to cool its transformers (plus additional thousands of pounds of refrigerant).
Trump governs the US through the use of twitter , setting every days agenda with his 4 AM tweets , which his opposition decries and the media parses incessantly , like an ancient Byzantine or Chinese court , until his next missive appears.
Like your style, Mr. McDonagh, much admired. Twitter was named for Twits (and/or Trumps) but The Orange Donald has been chosen mostly for his success as Circus Barker, and all in Orange.
MC, just for our many mafias Game of Thrones. I wish I could say “Just wake me when it’s over” but these latest TV “reality” episodes will needs be put us all on High Alert for the duration.
No choice. They may be dull, but the fallout won’t be.
Are you sure? I was led to believe that Trump governs twitter through his misuse of the US.
what’s it called again when your own government and miltary attack you …. erm …..?
Another day in democracy?
DEMOcide.
Word, outta Ancient Greece. Were they clever enough to have projected its iterations into today’s meaning?
Probably. Socrates got the ironles.
Plato got it.
Are you serious? off-Guardian are also censoring views they don’t like.
Never seen it, rarely if ever found a less open site for posters
Oh shut up!
I see what you did there! 😉
I do, too. (emoji smile here)
I Have just been to both off-g’s twitter and facebook pages with no problems, so what happened? why have they changed their tactic?
You notice there are at least 2 people on here who are putting a thumbs down to everything, but they never put a comment. Obviously they have no real counter argument, otherwise they would be more than happy to put their point across. I think these people are just on here to agitate and their ‘thumbs down’ has no real meaning. I liken them to trolls on Twitter and Facebook who make nasty comments but would never come up to your face and say the same thing. I wouldn’t put it past the 77th Brigade to be going on websites and stirring up trouble. I dare you ‘thumbs downers’ to come out of the closet and argue your case!
you just show how folk can and most do, focus on the negative, this is exactly why I feel that “tut tutting” mask wearers who look like they should really know better, (your mates gran who is scared witless and others in same state of hysteria are not to be tut tutted) folk who look like they have a good education, them folk, tut tut them and they will remember it throughout their day/week… the more we tut tut the more chances we have of waking folk up to at least start to begin questioning what is going on right under their noses.
The notion that a thumbs down vote is trolling is possibly the most ridiculous misuse of the word troll I have ever come across.
Steve Hayes – From the Cambridge English Dictionary. ‘Trolling – the act of leaving an insulting message on the internet in order to annoy someone:’ The word fits the bill as far as I am concerned, but you are entitled to your opinion.
You may have noticed the definition you quote includes the words “in order to annoy”, which means that the action is intended to cause negative feelings. How you can claim that you know someone is voting a thumbs down with the intention of causing upset?
Steve Hayes – There are even 2 thumbs down for the passing of Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac further down this page. They probably don’t even know who Peter Green was! You can’t convince me that some people aren’t putting thumbs down on here just for the sake of it, or to cause trouble. Why would you want to thumbs down anybody’s death unless you were sick in the head or to cause upset. Think what you want.
You apparently think you have refuted my point, but you haven’t. The key issue is the motivation of the other. And, unless you can read minds, you do not know what is in the hearts and minds of others.
Agree.
IMHO, poor definition; Cambridge should include ‘provoke’ or ‘trigger’ as well as annoy.
Their are several definitions of trolling which avoid judgemental bias that most sheeple that entertain themselves on these sites avoid . Making the term vague and somewhat meaningless newspeak as anyone who understands Wittgenstein , Orwell ,or Chomsky etal knows .
This issue has come up many times before. It even specifically happened to me, that I upvoted a comment I liked – and a downvote simultaneously appeared. I think it’s only a legitimate down vote if there are no corresponding up votes.
Howard – There are even 2 thumbs down for the passing of Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac further down this page. They probably don’t even know who Peter Green was! You can’t convince me that some people aren’t putting thumbs down on here just for the sake of it, or to cause trouble. Why would you want to thumbs down anybody’s death unless you were sick in the head?
Your 2 and -1 is now down 1. 2 and -2. No offence. Just legitimizing it for you.
You cannot read anything into a thumbs down. I’m giving you one for this.
If there’s a thumbs down feature on a site that is open to all then people will use it!
That’s a good idea. “Thumbs down all.” 0 and -347/347. “Thumbs up all” 347/347 and -347/347. Your turn.
PS, I very much doubt that the 77th Brigade come here. I guess they might, but I have no idea how you would identify such a person and what they could do.
Is anyone going to change your opinions here? Nobody will change mine!
I have have the most downvotes on this thread for challenging someone regarding downvotes.
As Steve Hayes has also said. It proves nothing.
You are entitled to disagree and give a downvote. (I shrug my shoulders.) Do it if you want to. You cannot expect to spend your time on comment threads and not get downvoted from time to time. It really doesn’t mean very much unless you are easily upset.
And finally. I notice a lot of downvotes on this thread. But there is no feature to say who is giving the votes, so neither you nor I have any idea if this is one or more people doing this or not.
I have a regular who downvotes everything I post: 0 -1 Sometimes s/he runs out of puff before the end of the sub-thread. Makes me feel quite lonely so at that point I stop scrolling down.
You may have a point. I noticed that on the World Socialist Web Site, they don’t usually have thumbs down but one article had a single down vote on every comment – even ones which were just giving info without an opinion. You may have compulsive down voters who do it just for the hell of it.
George Mc – Not everyone agreed with my comment on here, but 13 did. Personally, if I disagreed with something somebody said I would like to put my point of view across. It is a forum for people’s opinions after all. A few of us know what’s happening on this site as well as others, but if these silly people want to thumbs down just for the sake of it, then that’s their entitlement. I just think it’s childish that’s all.
No damage done in daring dummies.
It’s like Mark Twain said, “Never argue with stupid people. They’ll just drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
(Close to it: the lens of my memory is still onjy 2.0. I’m waiting for advances in stem cell tech to give me an upgrade.)
Their obtuse friends’ has?
Sorry, I’ll read that again. “Their obverse friends’ has?”
I just posted this but, ironically, it went into the “Awaiting for approval tray”.
https://twitter.com/JohnPlatinumG/status/1287291391572418561
“Awaiting for approval tray”. = censorship
Others say software glitch. Some of my ‘awaiting….’ posts appear after a refresh
I have been censored by Twitter ever since I showed Mr Higgins of Bellingcat notoriety to be an Eliot!
https://twitter.com/JohnPlatinumG/status/1096424028422721537
My blog-posts allegedly go directly from WordPress to Twitter (which I rarely use) and I can see them there but nobody shares or comments any more. It is 12 months since I got any traffic from Twitter. Can they do this? Yes. Do they do this? Yes.
Sorry to hear OffG is going thru this crap, but the situation is now becoming so grave that any site or person that continues speaking out against the over the top propaganda will be targeted.
This is all part of the deeply insidious and fascist ‘new normal’ planned for all of us. And the squashing of all dissent is very much part of that.
I’m on my final warning with Facebook because I posted an interview with Dr Andrew Kaufman. Nearly a week ago a group I was a member of, with 66000 members was deleted by FB.
Other groups have been given final warnings, and threatened with being banned, scores of people have had their FB accounts banned or suspended, with many other examples of the most blatant censorship, including Max Igan having his entire YouTube channel removed.
This is so reminiscent of the mass book burnings in Nazi Germany or the censorship in some fascist dictatorship in South America during the 1970s.
And again… Who funds these ‘fact checkers’. How ‘independent’ are they?
Anyone here know about Samizdat?
Gazza
I think at least some of these fact checkers ask their readers, the public to donate.
Apart giving money to The Guardian I can think of nothing worse. Being indocrinated enough to read their drivel. And stupid enough to give money.
Its akin to putting a % of your wages specifically to fund mass murder, terrorism and warheads to nuke ourselves. Yes, we do that to some extent already through our taxes but anyone who can’t see the danger these sites present needs their head testing.
As I said before, enemies of the state, enemies of the people and our children and their right to grow up without war and fascism.
Sadly most public are unaware of the imminent danger we are in. We are meekly accepting everything we are told and hard fought freedoms being chucked away in a flash. We are entering a new dark age. At least I can look to my children and say I resisted. The majority of the public won’t even have that comfort.
I agree with everything you said, especially your last paragraph.
The people who are resisting this here, well the truly odious TV channels in Melbourne are getting videos off these people’s Facebook pages of them being arrested for not wearing a mask, or being refused entry to a shop for not wearing one, and putting these clips in their news bulletins or on their own Facebook pages.
Have a guess what the response has been?
Thousands and thousands, the vast majority calling for the Resistors to be jailed for not wearing a mask, hurling lots of abuse and displaying what can only be described as a lynch mob mentality. I’m not exaggerating.
I’ve seen a lot of these comments myself.
The majority of the public in Australia, or at least, in Victoria are actively participating in bringing in a new fascist order that will completely snuff out freedom for everyone, even for them.
I hear things are bad in Spain and parts of France, and California is in lockdown again. Hope your week goes well L.
wow aussies and californians are such loser bum lickers. oh hangon maybe its just some more of your doom propaganda. remember rule 1 is to not watch the terror networks especially australian ones.
GEZZAH: “I hear things are bad in Spain and parts of France, and California is in lockdown again.”
I got really pounced on successively by two Latina lady mgrs. yesterday, with my grey camo gaiter around my neck instead of my muzzle zone. I was a little taken aback by the gnarly energy involved, and I told off the first one who was talking over me because I didn’t like her tone, “I say, get back with me, should you ever get the chance, when theyre carting us all off to relocation camps, because we all just rolled over, everybody just complied their way straight to a grave.”
I think it scared her. She called security, but then an older woman appeared and did the same. Shouted me down. But walking away she relented, a little, “Well just for the time being anyway.”
And then I realized I had driven up to the southwest tip of Santa Ana, and it’s really Little Mexico. I lived long in E. LA and it’s like that, 95% Mexicanos, whom I love. Heavily imbued with Native Americana, which I like all the more. Peoples of the Spirit.
Lot of sociology going on yesterday, but I felt once I diagrammed the exchanges, that theyre all just scared, so they soldier on and try to deal. They have big concerns about family members getting shipped back to Mexico. At least I told one as she walked back to the offices in the bowels of the stocking areas, “But you heard my message didn’t you? We’re all being played.”
She didn’t answer, which was the best try at harmony.
But I shouted loud enough, calmly and firmly, that the whole store heard. Quite a lot don’t speak English.
I did a lot of shopping, and by checkout they’d calmed down. A sweet little youngster rang me up and said, “Actually I hear it a lot. A lot of people are upset.”
I said we can’t take this at all lightly and she nods in total agreement. We need to keep our eye on the ball 24/7. She was nodding confidentially.
“I’m not trying to scare people, just alert them. If that means alarm them, they need to know that this is by far the biggest threat I’ve ever seen in my 70 years. Let all your people hear about it, your families, your neighborhoods, know it and study it.”
I told her they’re trying to scare them all because they know immigrants are the most vulnerable. We were on the Same Page, no doubt.
Their Parliament of Creeps.
Well, all in some bizarre creeping lockstep. Every one of us is being assaulted at the tenderest links.
I suspect Newsom is just another hostage, I suppose its to his credit that he says the State of California will pay out of its own pockets $600 a week unemployment if its cut this Friday, the time stamp.
I know this has been analyzed for months, but it’s worth speculating that “they” are using wellplaced insiders to kick up the numbers with both euthanisms and fake counts (Fla. Motorcyclist, inter alia). It seems that there are a variety of mechanisms to “trump” local leaders when reopening becomes tangible. In short, to keep it going when maybe other leaders would like an end. It seems that the Nazis and Freemasons, assorted mafia capos, ‘garchs, and all the Usual Susses, are using security clearance mechanisms through all this, and Onertà, to keep many out of the loop on a need to know basis, thus making freedom more and more relative, as fact and term.
This link below contains all things Covid California, “everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask” — an old Woody Allen tag.
https://californiahealthline.org/morning-briefing/tuesday-july-28-2020/
Hi John, good to hear from you👍
Just watched a chilling video from someone in Oklahoma where there are plans for mandatory vaccinations in that State, and anyone who refuse to get vaccinated…. well, there will be buses waiting.
The person speaking in the video seemed to be a Church Minister and he said it will be the police enforcing this.
He said that most police will go along with this fascism.
The State Premier here in Victoria has stated several times that the covid normal will continue until every single Victorian is vaccinated. He’s made that as clear as day.
I have about 6 weeks of food at home and have only been going out for walks in my neighbourhood which is pretty quiet.
The Facebook groups I’m in that oppose this agenda are being relentlessly demonised by the MSM here as ‘bizarre cults’ and ‘virus deniers’ and ‘putting in danger people’s health’ and ‘spreading fake news and dangerous disinformation’.
Sadly, the large majority in Australia are so brainwashed now, they’re lapping up what the media is saying, and some people in these groups have been publicly identified (by the media) and been subjected to death threats, being horribly abused, being told to ‘just die’ and many are demanding that these activists be jailed or put in a mental health facility.
It’s that bad here. The police are now arresting people here who do not wear a mask in public, as well as issuing a fine. And the large majority are cheering it on and praising the police.
It looks like at least 2 other States here are on the verge of going into lockdown. They’ll just keep swapping them about.
Appreciate the link John, will check it out👍
Gezzah, I just read the “plot summary” of “Fahrenheit 451” which I have kept also a copy of, as Ray Bradbury signed it some years ago, nearby where I am at the moment.
Maybe 10 blocks away around the Bay, at “The Cannery” in 2005.
I had found the movie thrilling when it came out, saw it with a classmate down the street, one Saturday in 1967, from where we both boarded at our preppy school.
The summary was maybe 5 pages, but it has SO many details that are prescient of our governments handling things now. Very striking, clue after clue, almost a parody in some ways.
Now after reading your post, I cant tell where the scifi novel leaves off and yours begins.
Your news sounds pre-Apocalyptic.
Well, all I can say is that the book’s hero Guy Montag was a resilient stalwart and escaped the worst, his very happenstances of his resistance became the means of his deliverance.
Here is the Plot Summary of Part 1 of Fahrenheit 451, just to whet the dystopic appetite of any of us who savor “eerie parallels”.
(Not to crowd the boards here with length, the other two parts and stunning conclusion may be found at the wikipedia piece on Fahrenheit 451 ):
PART 1
“THE HEARTH AND THE SALAMANDER”
Guy Montag is a “fireman” employed to burn houses containing outlawed books. He is married but has no children. One fall night while returning from work, he meets his new neighbour, a teenage girl named Clarisse McClellan, whose free-thinking ideals and liberating spirit cause him to question his life and his own perceived happiness. Montag returns home to find that his wife Mildred has overdosed on sleeping pills, and he calls for medical attention. Two uncaring EMTs pump Mildred’s stomach, drain her poisoned blood, and fill her with new blood. After the EMTs leave to rescue another overdose victim, Montag goes outside and overhears Clarisse and her family talking about the way life is in this hedonistic, illiterate society. Montag’s mind is bombarded with Clarisse’s subversive thoughts and the memory of his wife’s near-death. Over the next few days, Clarisse faithfully meets Montag each night as he walks home. She tells him about how her simple pleasures and interests make her an outcast among her peers and how she is forced to go to therapy for her behavior and thoughts. Montag looks forward to these meetings, and just as he begins to expect them, Clarisse goes missing. He senses something is wrong.[18]
In the following days, while at work with the other firemen ransacking the book-filled house of an old woman and drenching it in kerosene before the inevitable burning, Montag steals a book before any of his coworkers notice. The woman refuses to leave her house and her books, choosing instead to light a match and burn herself alive. Jarred by the woman’s suicide, Montag returns home and hides the stolen book under his pillow. Later, Montag wakes Mildred from her sleep and asks her if she has seen or heard anything about Clarisse McClellan. She reveals that Clarisse’s family moved away after Clarisse was hit by a speeding car and died four days ago. Dismayed by her failure to mention this earlier, Montag uneasily tries to fall asleep. Outside he suspects the presence of “The Mechanical Hound”, an eight-legged robotic dog-like creature that resides in the firehouse and aids the firemen in hunting book hoarders.
Montag awakens ill the next morning. Mildred tries to care for her husband but finds herself more involved in the “parlor wall” entertainment in the living room – large televisions filling the walls. Montag suggests that maybe he should take a break from being a fireman after what happened last night, and Mildred panics over the thought of losing the house and her parlor wall “family”. Captain Beatty, Montag’s fire chief, personally visits Montag to see how he is doing. Sensing his concerns, Beatty recounts the history of how books lost their value and how the firemen were adapted for their current role: over the course of several decades, people began to embrace new media (in this case, film and television), sports, and an ever-quickening pace of life. Books were ruthlessly abridged or degraded to accommodate short attention spans while minority groups protested the controversial, outdated content they perceived in literature (yet comic books, trade papers, and sex magazines remained, as these fed into the mainstream population’s desire for mindless entertainment). At the same time, advances in technology resulted in nearly all buildings being made out of fireproof materials, and the traditional role of firemen in preventing fires was no longer necessary. The government instead turned the firemen into officers of society’s peace of mind: instead of putting out fires they became responsible for starting them, specifically for the purpose of burning books, which were condemned as sources of confusing and depressing thoughts that only complicated people’s lives. After an awkward encounter between Mildred and Montag over the book hidden under Montag’s pillow, Beatty becomes suspicious and casually adds a passing threat as he leaves, telling Montag that if a fireman had a book, he would be asked to burn it within the next 24 hours. If he refused, the other firemen would come and burn his house down for him. The encounter leaves Montag shaken.
After Beatty leaves, Montag reveals to Mildred that, over the last year, he has accumulated a stash of books that he has kept hidden in the air-conditioning duct in their ceiling. In a panic, Mildred grabs a book and rushes to throw it in the kitchen incinerator. Montag subdues her and tells her that the two of them are going to read the books to see if they have value. If they do not, he promises the books will be burned and all will return to normal the last year, he has accumulated a stash of books that he has kept hidden in the air-conditioning duct in their ceiling. In a panic, Mildred grabs a book and rushes to throw it in the kitchen incinerator. Montag subdues her and tells her that the two of them are going to read the books to see if they have value. If they do not, he promises the books will be burned and all will return to normal.
END PÀRT 1
GEZZAH, I just read the “plot summary” last night of “Fahrenheit 451” which I have kept also a copy of, as Ray Bradbury signed it some years ago, nearby where I am at the moment.
Maybe 10 blocks away around the Bay, at “The Cannery” in 2005. Ironic enough, since I haven’t spent much time here until the last few months. I’ve been 100 miles south in San Diego for years. I only came back to an area I could navigate, since 1957, when they shut down in March so much where I was down south there, not far from the Mexican border.
I had found Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 movie version thrilling when it came out, saw it oneSaturday 1967 with a classmate, down the street from where we both boarded at our preppy school.
The summary I just read was maybe 5 pages, but it has SO many details that are prescient of our governments handling things now. Very striking, clue after clue, almost a parody in some ways.
Now after reading your post, I can’t tell where the scifi novel leaves off and yours begins…
Your news sounds pre-Apocalyptic.
Well, all I can say is that the book’s hero Guy Montag was a resilient stalwart and escaped the brunt, the very happenstances of his resistance became the means of his deliverance.
I said on a radio show — just to broadcast the shout out as widely as possible, since I usually don’t get quite that “carried away” (on actual Tesla airwaves) — about 16 years ago, “It’s going to be a wakeup call when people in the USA start seeing the flames lapping around their feet and their big screens, and suddenly realize just how bad this is, but they’d better wake up soon, or they’ll wake up dead.”
And of course Guy Montag’s wife is mesmerized by her ghost life on her “parlor wall” a huge wall-sized TV screen and her state-broadcast “family”. She finds her husband’s resistance to it all, just so odd. Bradbury wrote that in 1948! Another world then, yet here that imaginary one of his suddenly is, upon us. A near replica.
The summary gave me chills. It sounds like Australia, which has really swallowed a lot of the Koolaid til now, it sounds. Hope they find the antidote for THAT.
You’re all in my thoughts and prayers.
Thanks John, I only just saw Part 1 of this 2 part reply then… In the middle of cooking dinner, so will go thru it later.
Others have made similar comments recently, but I now know how people in Germany so easily accepted Hitler.
Yes, I know about the Weimar Republic and what lead to Hitler taking over, but it’s the same mindset here now. The same mindset – people looking for a saviour and who will beg for the vaccine. Hell, they already are.
Another anti lockdown activist arrested by police today, the mainstream media are absolutely gloating about it, and the Coliseum spectators are demanding blood.
Have a good day tomorrow, thanks for your replies…
Bill and Melinda Gates help the Guardian too. BTW, We Trumpers don’t meekly accept the new authoritarianism , which is why we support the Don’s battle to drain the swamp and make democracy and freedom great again.
‘Samizdat‘, you say?
A purveyor of ‘Samizdat’ would be engaged in a selfless act of benevolent philanthropy, from the off. This would be someone who is aware of an urgent need for the widest dissemination of information which must reach as many people as possible. In order to bypass such media and info distribution channels as are susceptible to being hacked, corrupted, targeted for attack or otherwise interrupted, the samizdat merchant will hand deliver this precious info via a self-produced leaflet or brochure, most efficiently done through the letterbox of the home. Cautious, invisible, hidden in plain sight wearing a suitably luminous gilet, the deed is done! Phew!.
Yes! But I’m not sure what a ‘luminous gilet’ is tho? A vest? Yellow perhaps?
I love how PolitiFact have their little True/False metre as the majority of their believers would only look at the metre, casting ones eyes any further would be too much effort. Rarely do PolitiFact quote any source material, they just write as if they are the source of truth – it’s a complete facade for it’s payroll masters.
The latest UK news, is not good. I live in England, and They have just cancelled Spain…You go to Spain (and we really like the Spanish) and some of our friends already have, even faking wearing a facemask, through all the bollocks checks -at the airports, getting on the plane, and getting off it and having your face checked…
You do that, when you come back you will be forced into self isolation for 2 weeks…Don’t think you can escape “our control”…”We” have your number. We know exactly where you live
You are being monitored – your phone, computer, and even the security cameras. that you yourself installed at both the front and back of your house, for £25 each direct from China, and connected to the internet as soon as you turned them on…
You were photographed not wearing a Mask.
Best ignored, and carry on as normal.
The new Nazis are Feliformia. They are like a cross-breed – highly vicious, but not as intelligent as either cats or dogs or us human people (when on form).
Dick Cheney and Tony Blair give a hint -but basically, they are not like a Proud Lion,,,
They look and act like this. They just go for The Kill..they don’t even eat most or any of the meat..They just like Killing..
Tony
For a minute I thought that was your no-mask selfie, Tony. 🙂 Handsome fella!
Go on it’s just a felinicious mask.
Killing? Just looks like it wants to play. With sheeple. Here kitty kitty kitty.
facebook n twitter r required to preface content containing signs of a lock down with a warning of said content. this is in keeping with the duty of care so is a lawful requirment to protect against further terrorism. one strike n u r out baby:) https://youtu.be/pE49WK-oNjU
if u dont know it now u know it babe. https://youtu.be/laGBdZR3Edo
I just got that on twitter too, it’s fucking outrageous
I wonder why Facebook and Twitter are censoring us.
I wonder why. Could it be something to do with the people who own them, I wonder?
What could they all have in common?
I wonder.
Yup. Faceberg and Twatter: the Dynamic Duo!
Fuck the begrudgers.
The effort they have to go to to try and convince anyone with a sheep brain that the Truth is Fake and Fake is Truth is basically going to backfire in the end.
I have never done Twitter, and I gave up Facebook, almost at the Start of This COVID Nonsense.
Most people will at least remember one song by Fleetwood Mac. Peter Green who started Fleetwood Mac off died today at the age of 73.
“Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac – “Oh Well”, Live@ Music Mash 1969″
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yq-Fw7C26Y
RIP.
Tony
Good choice Tony. Classic, RIP Peter Green.
How about this version. I look forward to these days with concerts again:
Sorry to hear that.. Need your love so bad.. that’s the one for me.. I’m ignorant of most of this genre of music..
Thanks for this ! I remember enjoying this song during the 1970s , while not a fan of the band, I alway liked Mr Greens work , until the Clintons . Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham made them a supergroup in the 1990s?
The articles under attack could be interpreted as a tell, they certainly do for me. No virus isolation, no disease, no death of thus disease. Or, at least, refute Koch’s postulates. This is where the real story begins, which calls into question large segments of western medicine. Especially, considering the tactics and historical skullduggery by big pharma. Not to mention the endless conflicts of interest at play.
Ironically, some of the best independent sources about Wu-flu are independent experts on Twatter. Try Dr James Todaro and Covid19Crusher if posters haven’t already. Both citizen journalists and heroes exposing the rich and powerful, not motivated by politics or money. No-one can profit by reporting truth about HCQ as they do, which is off-patent, highly effective, and destructive of Big Pharma’s attempts to profit from our fear and death. You won’t trust any MSM or official news outlet again after checking these guys out.
Anything beyond isolation of a virus which is demonstrated to cause a disease is a layer of distraction (of which there are many). Which serve to legitimize the core “pandemic” narrative. Be it unwittingly or otherwise.
I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding about what sites like Facebook and Twitter are. A significant number of their users seem to think its some kind of public resource operated for the common good that is designed to promote free speech and other good stuff. Its not. These sites are, as they say, ‘strictly commercial’. The only reason why you don’t get charged directly for using it is that, like an ant farm, their business model is a matter of setting up an attractive environment and observing the behavior of the inmates. The users don’t pay for the product because they are the product, they’re the raw material for a huge advertising ecosystem, a system to vast and far reaching that it would amaze most people if they were aware of it. Its this ecosystem that was originally conceived to sell everyday household items but like any other advertising medium it could also be used to sell ideas and ideologies. This powerful tool cries out for regulation but we can’t do it directly without contradicting our narrative about how liberal and democratic we are so the effort will be indirect via fact checking. (Its actually not a particularly novel approach, the Chinese, for example, rely not so much on blocking external information as just making it difficult and inconvenient to access since the vast majority of people will follow the easy route.)
Sites like offGuardian do a wonderful job of just hosting opinion regardless of what it actually is, the only requirement is that people are polite to each other. It has been a bit disappointing in recent weeks because of the proliferation of “Covid is a conspiracy’ type articles which mostly seem to be written from a British perspective (and are a reaction to the appalling disarray of the UK government with regard to just about everything except using the police to beat people over their hears about trivial infractions). There’s a lot more going on out there in the world, a lot of it ‘not nice’. Covid will eventually go away but the Barrs, Pomperos, Trumps and Johnsons of this world will not and I’d suggest that they’re much more of a clear and present danger to our societies than any dumb virus. (Remember, its their ineptitude in forming social policies with regard to the virus that’s doing the real damage. They’re also the ones trying to put about a lot of the BS about it, using the words of Dick Cheney as their guide “They create their own reality”.)(….and seriously, would you believe anything put out by the crew that brought you such international best sellers as “Iraq, Part Deux”?)(Especially when they’re now out forming ‘coalitions’ against China.)(Rome is burning, folks, so cut the music.)
;
Who says? Covid’s lineage – not least pandemics 2, 3, 4 etc. – will be around for a long, long while yet, unless people start asking questions now.
Or learn to treat the Wu-flu threat more rationally, as we used to do with other, more serious risks. Also, why are authorities promoting fear of covid19 and climate ‘crisis’ like delusional teen activists, instead of a calm, reasoned, adult approach? Because they’ve been trapped or recruited by fear and fear-mongers, and no longer understand scientific scepticism. I explain how irrational fear recruits and spreads here (25m read):
https://medium.com/@nickhunt_41682/how-not-to-become-a-climate-crisis-fear-monger-e6cf65168c21
The Democrats have been fully on board with every military atrocity you people have carried out in the world. When Trump wants to pull troops out of wherever you’ve invaded, it’s the Democrats who gang up with traitorous Repubs to stop him. It’s the Democrat governors in 40 or so states who are playing pathetic little dictators. Because the script calls for creating as much disruption as you can. With violence, if necessary. This “covid” isn’t going away, mate. The aim is to fuck up the November election and put the Party of Evil in charge. Because they have a lot of covering-up to do for some really heinous things they’ve been up to.
True. the Labour party is not much different, though — you’ve got a rank and file that has a large majority that says “What a crock!” but a leadership of ‘sensible’, ‘moderate’ sorts that go with the program as if its some kind of loyalty test. (Your expeirence with Corbyn should demonstrate what happens if you get a leadership that says “Hang on a minute, this does not computer”. It wasn’t an outlier, eihter — look how they went after Ken Livingstone.)
We’re really in baby steps mode here. I cut my political teeth during the premiership of Harold Wilson, no revolutionary but give the reaction from the Establishment you’d never think so. Since then governments in the US and UK have lurched far to the right so its indeed a pipe dream to think of revolutionary change. Its got to be patient baby steps — frustrating, but honestly its the best we can do.
If you doubt how much we’ve fallen then I should mention that the revolutionary changes put through by such radicals as Bernie Sanders are merely what we took for granted in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the UK. (The US was different because society was more backward — it was systematically racist and was fighting not a Cold War but what it thought was a Holy War.)
Bernie Sanders’ policies work for rich countries but the western world will not be rich by the end of next year and so his policies may delay the collapse but will not be an option in the mdeium to long term.
There are no winning options in November: Either the Democrats will take the USA to war to save themselves – probably too late to save the USA using war – or Trump will desperately try to rescue the USA peacefully while the mob tries to destroy Trump from within. Either way ends up destroying the USA and the whole Western demand-led economy that keeps the world ticking over.
I see the opposite: ‘conservative’ parties and politicians have been assimilated into leftist groupthink. The left have won the culture wars and turned patriots into lepers. No conservative or anyone else today can say, without fear of reprisal or condemnation, such things as ‘Britain First’, ‘multiculturalism is a huge mistake’, ‘Islam threatens our future’. The left went insane and violent following the election of real ant-leftist Trump, who has exposed and mocked their hate, elitism and intolerance of democracy and ordinary people, while being himself mocked and condemned by fake conservative politicians across Europe. Yet it’s Trump who stands up to Chinese communist tyrants putting their Muslims into concentration camps and harvesting their organs. The left remains shamefully silent, because they so hate Orange Man Bad rather than the murdering tyrant Yellow Man Good. Today’s left have neither the brains nor the balls to oppose real tyranny.
True, but let’s not forget it was a Republican administration that invaded Iraq (twice) and began the “War on Terror”.
Again true, but let’s not pretend Trump has any ideology of his own. He serves to antagonize the “opposition” because “owning the libs” is what his base wants. This strategy has served him well. If the Democrats wanted to pull out, he’d be doing everything in his power to increase troops.
Trump’s no different than any other US president we’ve had, and there’s not much difference between Democrats and Republicans.
So is Trump just another stooge of the anti-democratic DC elite he calls the swamp and promises to drain? Is he really treated no differently by the establishment and obedient MSM from the other stooges like Obama? How then can he also be the puppet of his base, which you say wants him to antagonise ‘the opposition’, which your scare marks suggest is really on Trump’s side? Or can no-one buy the billionaire businessman, and he aims to MAGA, as he explained? How very confusing. Maybe your interpretation needs an upgrade.
Leftist groups like BLM and Anti-Fa have adopted Lenin’s infamous philosophy ‘by any means necessary’ in their quest for power. These extremists embrace intolerance, hate and violence and employ them against anyone in their way. Their founders are self-confessed Marxists who embrace the subversive tactics of Saul Alinsky, the US Leninist academic (also Hilary Clinton’s mentor, supervisor and idol in the late 60s). These groups harness and use our moral passion to end injustices like racism as a political tool against the democratic process and political foes. They have thus fooled millions of good-hearted people into supporting them and betrayed the progressive revolution, just as the Soviet communists did to the ordinary Russians who once saw their future oppressors as heroes. As a leftist for decades, I thought our movement pursued justice and spoke truth to power. I thought we resisted corrupt power But after the insane reaction to Trump and the explosion of hate and violence across the west, any lingering hopes that the political left actually wants more justice rather than more power finally vanished. The political left have become the elitists and Nazis they say they hate and oppose.
You are naive. Destroying the stable business environment – which seems to be their strategy at the moment – will mean no recovery for decades. Who will ever start an airline again, start a tourism business again, without some guarantees that the public purse will compensate them should another lockdown occur? No, you won’t be flying to your holiday abroad or be seeing your relatives on the other side of the world ever again after the existing airlines are bust – which they will be by the end of the year without govt help.
Countries like New Zealand has basically lost its 20% of GDP that comes from tourism. Will it now turn into a second world country, will it now have to start destroying its environment with mines and the like to start paying the bills?
This is the price you pay for leadership that kowtows to mob rule. The mob is way more dangerous than any of your pet hate figures (Trump, Pompeo etc) and will probably end up killing billions of people, not just millions. The mob is dumb as shit and it is running the show.
You think a Covid vaccine is the end of this: you are naive. The world will never return to what it was, there will never be the same mom and pop shop small business economy again. The haters are taking over the world and they are not done by a long chalk, they will keep destroying until there is nothing left. You start a business, they will eventually find a reason to cancel your business and leave you broke. The smaller the business, the more time you have, but it will get there eventually.
Then you think countries like Australia will be able to pay superannuation to their retired folks? Think again, when the stock market crashes all pensions will cease to be. That will be a truely terrible day. Covid, the trivial disease that is being used to destroy capitalism, solve the climate crisis and destroy everything we have built since the industrial revolution. Greta will be grinning from ear to ear, until they come for her.
‘ This is the price you pay for leadership that kowtows to mob rule’
You got that one backwards. There is nothing wrong with the mob only that leaders abuse the gullibility of the mob into believing anything that is said to them through radio, tv, internet and the schooling system.
Mob rule destroys debate, reason, rationality, and majority rule. Mobs are malevolent. But you only condemn their leaders. Do you envy mob power? If so, you are kow-towing to rule by violence and force, as do all fascists. Isn’t that getting it backwards?
Looks like every post has at least one thumbs down lol!….someone’s busy!
I’ve just give you one. What of it?
Thanks for the confession. That clears the air a lot.
By the way, the past participle of “to give” is “gave”, but what of it?
The resident downvoter will now be instantly recognizable, even when his social awkwardness comes out in his comments as, “llg*swjhhcg&obl^ueobbb%%lele”…
We have trolls. Quite a few since the panicdemic began as well as DDoS attacks on this site. They’re from the 77th Brigade or a similar outfit.
Nearly all of my posts recently have gotten a downvote straight off.
I don’t care. Sobeit.
I come here to vent my spleen or express my opinion, that’s it.
Hope you are well W, and you are coping with the Kafkaesque madness…
Indeed we do, Gezzah.
I see posters being thumbed-down who have never been thumbed-down in the past. The validity of their comments has not waned so what’s afoot?
Are they being thumbed-down by the dumbed-down?
Ha ha! It would seem so… 😉
No, not the dumbed down, unless it’s Crispy or William H Bonney come back to give us grief again.
Everyone is getting downvotes. Like I said to Wardropper I couldn’t care less, but it’s the 77th Brigade or paid trolls trying a different tactic – giving everyone downvotes.
Well to them I say – Give it your best shot you slobbering sycophantic bootlicking serfs of the 0.01%!!
Down here in Victoria, things are getting really nasty. Have a good week John👍
What a pathetic manner in which to “earn” a living…
Et tu, mon ami.
As good a week as it can be in Raccoon City, of course 🙁
Keep playing that music.
Hope you are coping well too Gezz. I count myself lucky not living in one of the maddest areas of the world…
The downvotes here certainly don’t make any sense, just like everything shovelled on top of us by “the authorities” these days, so at least there is a certain consistency there 🙂
Lots of people here have literally lost their minds such has been the relentless fear mongering of the media.
Think I’ll try and keep my head down for a bit. Enjoy your week Wardropper, at least it’s summer up there!
Yes. Summer is nice, if rather short…
I was saying to my wife today that if there was a country on this earth where the current madness hasn’t taken hold, I’d want to move there, but I suppose it’s really not so bad here – so far…
The worst of it is just reading about how awful it is in some countries, like yours…
Trolls come to hate rather than debate, which they fear losing. ’Vent my spleen’ sounds dangerously close to that. But it is tempting and also fun, which is why I rarely resist venting when encountering sneering, bigoted trolls. You must never appease haters and bigots, just hit them twice as hard, as I learnt from Trump and Churchill.
Gezza Potts – Personally, if I disagreed with something somebody said I would like to put my point of view across. It is a forum for people’s opinions after all. A few of us know what’s happening on this site as well as others, but if these silly people want to thumbs down just for the sake of it, then that’s their entitlement. I just think it’s childish that’s all.
Yes, agree with you. It is childish and somewhat cowardly not to say why you’re giving someone a downvote, tho my theory is that they’re paid trolls or from the establishment.
lol, WTF. I gave the thumbs down to be provocative!
Life’s too short…
If silly people want to thumbs down comments just for the sake of it, then that’s their entitlement. I just think it’s childish that’s all, in fact I think it’s pathetic.
Yes, what of it? Why the sudden obsession with a nit-brain (a child of any age, surely) who’s clicking every down-vote button because there’s nothing else better to do? Is this a hangover from social media? Either way, surely, there are more important things to bother about than this!
I suspect, John, you were ‘avin’ a larff? Well, I thought your comment was funny, anyway. In the unlikely event that you are Private ‘John Pretty’ of the 77th, I hope they promote you because you have at least got a sense of humour.
That would be unlike people who correct each other’s grammar. We’re all on keyboards and typos slip through the net. A bit of tolerance please and let’s brush-up our irony detectors. Come-on you down-voters, let’s see if I can beat John’s score . . . . . 🙂
That said, Miriam, typos are one thing, but the people who have something worthwhile to say here are invariably well-educated, while the appalling grammar which only very occasionally surfaces on this site is usually a signpost to a trouble-maker, who, as you suggest, has nothing better to do.
Perhaps, as a teacher, I tend towards being a “grammar nazi”, but when you see a comment like, “Well, you Putingpots deserve all you get for suporting them Ruskkies and there evil hating us for are freedoms”, I think it’s quite in order to heave a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that you are not missing anything by ignoring whatever else might be in the comment…
I certainly agree with you that humour is a crucial safety net in our “situation” today.
Ironically enough, I used to be a teacher and I hate bad grammar too. I even went to a grammar school. My husband is a fully-fledged ‘Grammar Nazi’ to the extent that if there is a grammatical infelicity in the first paragraph of an article he has to be persuaded not to dismiss it out-of-hand! (He says I’m exaggerating.)
I have had to curb these tendencies in myself in the age of the message board. I think you’re right that most trolls give themselves away by their bad grammar and spelling. The more subtle ones can express themselves fluently but identify themselves by their ‘whataboutery’ or ‘straw man’ arguments. Tedious but I find it doesn’t take long to see them coming and, as you say, ignore them.
I went to a grammar school too, even though nobody really thought that grammar was particularly emphasized there… But our teachers were bright people, that’s for sure. Strict, but bright.
Incidentally, I quite enjoy playing an online game, and some of the English on display in the chat box there has to be seen to be believed… So I quite naturally lower my standards there, just to have some fun, which everybody seems to agree is the whole point of the game. It’s a bit like learning a new language – an interesting challenge, “American back-street slang”, where educated English has no place…
For God’s sakes you egit. A typo when I’m tired and bored proves nothing.
You really are a prize prat.
This is no place for tired and bored people…
Yes, I’m quite sure I was “avin’ a larff” MiriamW 🙂 Thank you.
lol, I’m still shocked that so few understood my point !
I’ve a way to go to beat dungroanin for downvotes though and I did get more downvotes for some offg thoughtcrime regarding Laura Kuenssberg last December.
My record for upvotes is over 50 so you take the rough with the smooth !
Used to happen when I read Zero Hedge, which I rarely visit now: you’d post and there would be an instant down vote. Either an internal glitch or the same algorithm that’s now been turned on Off-G.
The Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) developed tools for British intelligence officials. These tools include the ability to manipulate the results of online polls (UNDERPASS), artificially inflate page view counts on websites (SLIPSTREAM), “amplify” sanctioned messages on YouTube (GESTATOR), censor video content deemed to be “extremist” (SILVERLORD), find private photographs of targets on Facebook (SPRING BISHOP), and “spoof” any email address and send an email under that identity (CHANGELING). https://www.aclu.org/other/jtrig-tools-and-techniques
You can find one JTRIG document here in PDF format: behavioural-science-support-for-jtrigs-effects. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=behavioural-science-support-for-jtrigs-effects
The Intercept also had fun with: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations which highlights the simple bloody-minded soldier boot boy approach. https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Thanks for the info, Money. You have to wonder what possible motivation anybody could have for downvoting the simple sharing of interesting facts.
As Eyes Open says below, “They must be unhappy”, although I have noticed that some people seem to have a knack for attracting mental ruin.
You describe the tactics typical of today’s totalitarian state agencies with informative links, thanks. Do you also have good data on who British intelligence is targeting? UNDERPASS and SLIPSTREAM sound like tools for manipulating public opinion in general, but I’d love to know in which direction. Which opinions does the UK state approve, I wonder? Certainly not those of Tommy Robinson or Katie Hopkins! Also, would your own opinion, as posted at the US independent media site Zero Hedge, have been targeted and downvoted by UK authorities?
I noticed that too. Whoever they are – I’m sending them a hug. They must be unhappy.
There’s obviously not just one of them! Or maybe just multiple ids.
Judy – everyone is getting them. Yes, there’s more than one, and they’re trying a different tactic.
I would lay money they’re from the 77th Brigade or they’re paid trolls. Already mentioned it a few times, but they’re doing it coz they want us all in a tizzy over votes, so, I Won’t mention it again!
Hope your weekend was good and the weather in N Wales pleasant👍
Could be the same id using several devices…
They won’t thank you…
Attilio – Personally, if I disagreed with something somebody said I would like to put my point of view across. It is a forum for people’s opinions after all. A few of us know what’s happening on this site as well as others, but if these silly people want to thumbs down just for the sake of it, then that’s their entitlement. I just think it’s childish that’s all.
How can I get a job as a fact checker?
Sounds like easy money.
I want a job as a ‘fact hunter‘, sounds a bit rude no?…)
You have to eat well.
Somebody famous once said that it’s easy to tell the truth. A liar has to be constantly watchful that he doesn’t say something which might contradict what he said yesterday…
So, it’s probably easy money to be an honest fact checker, but today’s fact checkers clearly include some very strange people, some of whom are not honest.
It’s the air of authority they claim to have that I take exception to. Fact checking is just an opinion dressed up as the unarguable truth.
It has gotten to the stage where, if you do not agree with some condescending arsehole’s version of the truth, then you are termed a ‘denialist’.
Language is viciously used to ostracise those who dare to question the official version of the truth. It is then that the facts do not seem to matter.
You are censored.
That’s all absolutely true. Can’t imagine why anybody would vote it down, but we have a resident trouble-maker here at the moment.
Er… two resident trouble-makers at the moment.
Such arrogant people have abandoned scepticism about their own beliefs and narratives, failing to realise that this is profoundly anti-science and therefore anti-Western. Scientific knowledge is in no way like the Oracle of Delphi; instead, “science is belief in the ignorance of experts” (Feynman). Scientific knowledge can always change and so improve; dogmatic knowledge (religious, ideological, superstitious) never changes.
Many fact-checkers are most honest but don’t realise they are actually useful tools for spreading falsehoods masquerading as truths, the victims of a partisan political agenda. They then entrap other innocents and so contribute to the massive social divisions and distrust we are now experiencing. This is particularly so with sites like Climate Feedback, as I explain here:
https://medium.com/@nickhunt_41682/how-not-to-become-a-climate-crisis-fear-monger-e6cf65168c21
It’s certainly true that falsehoods masquerading as truths are easily spread.
Nevertheless, I keep finding myself wondering whether people have always been this gullible, or whether it is particularly serious nowadays…
Very likely the real rot set in when commercials were first “allowed” on TV way back, ostensibly because the income from advertising was deemed essential for the survival of the exciting new “cinema at home” media, but also because we were all deliberately brainwashed into accepting without question that the survival of commercialized TV was even important…
Plenty of jobs as a ‘fact eraser’ and ‘fact replacer’. Neverless, the truth will out …. eventually. Keep up the good work off-guardian.
Not necessarily. The scientists who contribute to sites like ‘Science Feedback’ (and its subsidiary ‘ClimateFeedback’) all volunteer their services for free. However, they all support the thesis that we are threatened by climate ‘crisis’, and only fact-check any expert who disagrees. They don’t fact check their own team, which now includes teen activists and fear-mongers like Greater Funberg. Amazingly, these fact checkers remain largely oblivious to their absurd bias and hostility against expert colleagues who reject their certainties. The best liars believe their own lies. Gullible readers who trust the fact-checkers also assume to know ‘the truth’ about climate change and then help smear anyone who disagrees. And so ignorance, fear and divisions all grow. I explain how such fact checkers are both trapped and trap other innocents here:
https://medium.com/@nickhunt_41682/how-not-to-become-a-climate-crisis-fear-monger-e6cf65168c21
My very mainstream friends from academia have now found out that there are people who actually ‘think’ that Covid19 is a hoax. And so after the ‘silly joke when isolating at home’ meme and ‘Covid19 is really a deadly disease’ meme, they now share their ‘heroic’ debates with Covid deniers on Twitter as a new meme on WhatsApp. Following such debates is like following a game of chess between two 8 year old kids, but what can I say: they are my friends…
At the time, back in high school, Academia gave one the promise of providing you a continuous pathway of intellectual development: one of the reasons why I wanted to go to academia. But in retrospect, I think that from an intellectual level you are better of at the Parks Department. That is, I expect that the non-intellectual level of people who think they know better than others (for the simple reason that they went to academia) is not present there.
Funny thing is: I am an MD, a PhD, had 4 years of extra training in epidemiology and, with the covid plandemic starting in March was asked by the hospital to take charge in the counting of cases with Covid19 there (quite a boring task, as there was not much counting that needed to be done). My friends know this, including the fact that the hospital that is situated in their living area had not many cases of Covid as I told them that fact. Yet, all who post all kinds of crap on Covid19 through WhatsApp never asked me what I, you know… an expert that they have as a friend in their midst, think about Covid19. Yet they have no problem at all in sharing what they think is epidemiologically sound and true when talking about the covid.
Oh well, let them be deluded. A good thing maybe is that they now share posts of people who have an other opinion on the covid than they have (a couple of months ago, the idea that Covid19 was a hoax was taboo to them, now they consider it ridiculous: one could call that progress).
Sometimes their ‘wisdom’ makes me chuckle. A few weeks ago one of my friends shared a story of that Apple had pre-installed a Covid app on Dutch I-phones and that this felt like ‘Big Brother’ to him. To which another friend of mine replied that it wasn’t Apple who pre-installed this, but that the Dutch government had requested Apple to do this. So I replied, sarcastically, that this made me feel a lot better, being the government who does all of this, not Apple. But my sarcasm was not seen as sarcasm at all as they continued talking in how they could make sure to finally install this thing as they all thought it was a very good idea to have such an app!
So there is the true meaning of Academic ‘progress’ as I was once promised, as in ‘ignorance is strength’.
Regulated Academic Thought System.
It was clear to me while at university that academia would not be a place for continuous intellectual development, but a place to conform. To research within pre defined or sanctioned narratives, to not find anything that threatened the narrative, to not let cats out of any bags, to maintain reputations and please sponsors. Perhaps it wasnt always this bad, I went to uni in 2010.
To truly develop intellectually one needs to be free of the need to conform. Conformism is wasted energy. I work in relatively low skilled work. I don’t make much but it suits me as conforming with things I know are false literally makes me ill.
I am a retired academic, a mathematician. I chose academe because I was young, idealistic and naive. As time passed, I came to realize that most academics are spineless, unprincipled careerists, and that most of academe is a mutual masturbation society. Fortunately, I earned tenure and used it to express my academic freedom, but at a cost. My salary was frozen a couple of times, the yearly increases were often minuscule, and there were other ways that the administration tried to make my life uncomfortable but I hung on, continued to resist and critique, and finally retired.
I ended up in academe simply by grasping opportunities, although I never intended to be a teacher. My experience there mirrors yours, and I quickly realized that my students really didn’t want to learn anything, but merely to pass exams. Even my colleagues apparently saw nothing wrong in going along with that.
Academic ‘success’ is obviously achieved by other means than by imparting knowledge effectively, but I, too, am now retired, even if my hobbies have since become a paid full-time job…
Ha, I love it, spot on!
I have been working as a research mathematician (in ecology) for 8 years, and over the last 4ish years have gradually realised that only about 3% of ecology studies have real-world value, the rest is largely useless and done simply to continue careers.
My mum coined the phrase “head wanking” to describe what you call a mutual masturbation society… great minds eh?
What a mum
Could any of your colleagues have worn a Trump hat or a Brexit T-shirt around campus? If not, why not?
Academics are supposed to think, are they not? I’m not an academic, yet I can see what’s going on.
I got drunk and stoned while academianing. Never quite got there at the end. Good times. Learned everything I know by living my life instead and not a life that was planned for me. I tell my kids to do what the fuck they like with theirs.
Apple sheeple, a new level.
Imagine an academic saying ‘multiculturalism is bad’ or wearing a Trump hat. Impossible. Universities (the non-technical faculties) are intolerant bastions of bigotry, production lines for conformist, unquestioning sheeple.
You regularly get deleted when I post your links on Slate also. You should have your lawyers inquire.
Who cares about Slate?
What’s Slate?
what the fuck is this?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53540691
holiday makers from the uk in Spain have to quarantine on return as the number of cases of the virus increases – naturally it’s to protect us – what the fuck is going on in britain – cases don’t mean anything –
is this because Catalonia is not ‘behaving’??? who the fuck has this leverage??
Probably bob. We are “governed” by idiots.
Gates’ cabal are ensuring that people suffer – that’s what’s happening. We are being made to suffer deliberately so that we surrender to being vaccinated, chipped, controlled etc..
As an email subscriber, can I just say “Hallelujah!”?
I politely bullied my way into a care home yesterday to see a neglected, dying man. I used a technique known as ‘removing objections one by one’. I paddled local management against corporate central, and exposed that when it comes to decision making, they’re winging it – their left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, and it’s all down to individuals! My dying friend is being killed just as Vernon Coleman described, by thirst! Sure, they place and log that 800ml of water was put in front of him daily, but he can’t reach for it, so they take it away – and he’s not on a IV rehydrating drip! Criminal! ‘hard to watch!
This is a invisible holocaust. Hundreds of thousands have been killed this way. The euphemism was Liverpool Care Pathway. Its new name is Respect, or something like that. There’s someone on Twitter who’s trying to highlight the issue: @drjonesaa
My own mother died this way. For some reason the crime doesn’t register.
Forgive me for mentioning it, but it surely is relevant here to know what the man is dying of.
These days, if he has covid in his bloodstream, that seems to mean that he should become a recorded covid fatality as soon as possible.
If it’s cancer, or a stroke, there is a process in-between, where covid is said to have miraculously and suddenly appeared in his bloodstream, so that he can, even in that case, also become a recorded covid fatality as soon as possible.
End result – the desired result: All our elderly citizens will have “died of covid” by this time next year…
A tongue-in-cheek comment? Perhaps. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Many people haven’t forgotten their basic instinct for, “See what you see; not what you are supposed to see.”
Also apologies to any who found that comment in any way hurtful. It was not meant to be insensitive, but it really concerns me that among the hundreds of other things hijacked by this abominable covid hoax, death is one of the most prominent.
And, speaking from personal family experience when the same was happening with food, they compound the abuse by saying to relatives every day “She/he didn’t want [sic] their food this evening”. As if the fact that it was two feet away from a weak, prostrate and drugged up, semi-comatose patient didn’t contribute.
Rosemary Frei’s Twitter page is gone.
Of course, she may have removed it herself. It’s also possible to imagine that she may have been harassed and threatened by other Twitter users.
Twitter unmacht Frei!
My Twitter page isn’t gone – fortunately it’s where it always has been: https://twitter.com/RosemaryFreiTO
I don’t visit Twitter, and now you’ve spoiled my joke. Still, on balance I’m glad to hear it. 😉
How strange. Because I clicked on my browser’s history link to your page and got the message that it had been removed. So maybe there was just a temporary glitch. But I don’t blame myself for thinking there might have been some hanky-panky. Glad the page is still there.
Fact-Checkers indeed! Who the **** might they be! Like the old adage as coined by Juvenal:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Or in plain English ‘Who Guards the Guardians’
” Coincidentally Facebook and Twitter have moved against us in unison as if they were one entity. ”
The CIA is one entity. It used to be separate American, British, Israeli and Nazi intel agencies for spying and general intelligence gathering.But they decided if they were to usher in the one world government ( NWO) they’d be far better sharing than hiding information.Follow the tree of knowledge to it’s root.The first money lenders who eventually took ownership of the banks and major currencies.Who their allies were and are.They’re the same entity behind the hijacking of the worlds money and food.They’re behind the hijacking of our freedom.And they’re behind every psyop. And they have a huge factory that churns out money and drugs they call pharma.
Everyone does and says more online than off now.They don’t need to pray for psychic magical powers any more. All they needed was a few social networks.The rest is easy.Just go and see which ‘graffiti’ they don’t like and which they do.Because nobody shuts up about any single thought they have or opinion they want to obsess about.And so many type in their sleep and obey gladly.They’ll follow anyone over a cliff if they have an ‘important’ job. Don’t let them take you.If they want to jump just wave.
The last lockdown suicide I read about was of a poor woman in Scotland. A hash tag was created #hernamewasyvonne
Another woman in the North of England:
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/familys-heartache-after-bubbly-sunderland-18656115
These suicides are being framed as ‘mental health’ issues. Turning the world into a prison camp (lockdown) is the cause, the mental distress is the symptom.
Yes. This winter past, they came for the elderly and infirm. Worked a treat! Suddenly quasi-mandatory jungle juice vaccines are on offer. Moving fast, while the victims are on the ropes!
See Article 6 of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights 2005.
Here
Useful should you feel like refusing.
a local hospital has said to me that their covid19 policy overrides the Human Rights declaration – they refuse me treatment because I won’t comply
You have to argue with them. NOTHING overrides a Universal Declaration.
Why do you even want their version of “treatment” anyway?
Suddenly, homoeopathy looks very appealing, and I will admit to being stunned by its effectiveness many years ago on my young children and myself, and for completely different symptoms – all debilitating.
Of course some disease requires conventional wisdom in its treatment, and perhaps you are stuck in that.
“The authorities” today are not what they used to be. They used to know what they were talking about, and they had a lot of experience. Now, it seems to be just another job for many, whether they’re actually interested in it or not.
Also, most of them are simply too young to have that experience, because ageism comes out far cheaper, and the result of that is that they don’t even look like “authorities” any more…
Suicide has long been regarded as a mental health issue anyway.
A minority of people choose this course of action when faced with difficulties in their lives or when suffering from depression.
It’s not always possible to say why they do it. A friend – actually he was a better friend of other members of my family – hung himself in his garage in the early hours of the morning in the spring of 2011.
Nobody knew he had this planned. My sister was even at his house the evening before and photographed him drinking a can of beer.
His wife found him. He didn’t leave a note.
I respectfully disagree. Someone’s life may be intolerable, for whatever reason.
It’s everyone’s right to end their life, since no one consents to being born. Our parents choose for us.
Quality is life is more important than life.
Well, I often say quality of life is more important than quantity of life. Which is what I initially though you were saying at the end there.
However, “intolerable” is subjective.
There are constructive ways of dealing with depression, though I know you will want to argue with me about that.
My family’s friend was – as far as anyone knew – happily married and had an active social life.
But what would I know? (I shrug my shoulders.) Perhaps you know better?
‘It’s everyone’s right to end their life, since no one consents to being born. Our parents choose for us.’.. Sounds about right for me.
Minor pedantic point, though. ‘choose’ is a movable feast here.
That aside, now that we are possibly entering a foreboding, fast forwarding near future of potentially grave danger, a search for a preemptive avenue of escape does seem to narrow choices down, a bit.
This makes me sad and scared.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. What is the best way.
I can’t believe our spineless politicians have welcomed the enemy.
It is always possible to make blanket judgements but every situation is unique. So for your own suicide – perhaps you will know what you are doing – or perhaps you will be under narratives of fear of pain of loss that bring you to see death as saviour from a life made into pain and loss.
But there is this; you are part of the lives of others as they are part of you and you neither live or die as a self righteous bubble of locked-down judgement – except such thinking runs and is given acceptance in place of truth.
The personality level can be grotesquely and insanely ugly, meaningless or blocking to a deeper quality of presence that is in essence timeless.
The persona is our masking adaptation by which to share in the human experience. You can SAY you did not choose to be born, but you are still choosing to be born and blaming your life on your parents or past. The mechanism called choosing is the giving of attention, value and priority that is for the most part running as an acquired and inherited pattern.
Some people have breakdown of identity in social masking in ways that can restore alignment consciously with simple presence. Others may simply persist in conflict or succeed on leveraging denial, and limitation as a masking over of control by which to maintain face at cost of life.
Regardless of what choices are made, we are beings of choice or to put in another way, we can always change our mind – or it would not be a mind.
Yet the capacity to lockdown in fear, hate and grievance as a narrative dictate, is the right to refuse love, relationship, truth or life and assert our own mind in judgement. But all judgements assume a point ‘outside’ from which to judge which does not exist. And yet they have all the power we give them.
‘Dont know mind’ is not acquired but simply honest.
False premises reap false profits that are eventually revealed to conceal toxic debts. Unresolved and unowned conflict that remains active in your account.
The capacity to release a false investment is the freedom to align a true.
While the mindset in possession and control cannot let go, you can.
The idea of dying to self-will rather than wilfully dying as its defiance against a hated life is the movement of spiritual opening.
For when control is yielded to the already movement of being, the true will is recognised and accepted rather than being covered over by a set of fig-leaf thinking over self-lack given power and multiplied.
Whomsoever or which ever covidiot marching mandated ijut troll voted this comment down, needs to see a true Dr. Of Psychology… &
Explore their humanity,
Above all others.
We don’t have a right to end our lives. Suicide is a tragedy.
We have the right to give and receive in our own measure and learn or grow on the basis of our choosing.
We may attempt to assign all kinds of rights to the ego – but the ego is an image of self that neither gives or receives but only seeks to get for itself – or indeed get rid of itself.
When you say suicide is a tragedy, you are not speaking as to one who release this lifetime and this world, but of another who remains and knows a sharing of life with the one who killed themself and is left with the legacy of abandonment and rejection that perhaps the suicide sought to escape.
Context is everything.
I don’t see life as having beginnings and endings – excepting as a specific focus within or through which to open and live experience.
My own experience leads me to question whether my life is a false self-concept in possessive sense for something that is the quality and presence of a gift – but which I gave the meaning of separateness, split off, locked down, masked and seeking control. The latter can be seen as a learned mind-habit of emotional reaction, but it can also be brought from automatic or conditioned response to consciously aligned choice.
Human life can be seen as a tragedy – for time can lay waste as well as be wasted. Suicide in life can be seen as the denial of the heart’s presence to the demands of a fearful and conflicted world/identity – for we learned this before we had self differentiation and took on much in our psychic environment or relationships that does not belong to us.
Off topic, but hilarious!
You can’t make this stuff up! As of today in Belgium everyone – well, at least one person per table – going to a café or restaurant has to fill out an ‘attendance’ form. Day of your visit (but not hour), table number (?!) and phone number or email address are required fields, but your name is only ‘asked’. The form further admonishes: “It is important that you fill out this form correctly, because you are helping in the creation of a Corona-free society.”
The form also explains what the operator does with the data:
“We keep your data in a closed envelope for a period of fourteen days, after which it will be irrevocably destroyed. Only in case of an established contamination will your data be further communicated to the competent government departments.”
Competent government departments?? Give me break…
Since there is no hour on the form the contact tracers will call you even if you were in the pub at noon and the contamination happened in a group that came at 10PM. Also, if you enter your deceased sister’s phone number on the form, nobody will be any the wiser. What a joke.
And within a week our politicians will lament again that we are not ‘following the rules’. The minister in charge of pubs and restaurants said only 2 days ago there was no legal basis basis for this, but they went ahead and did it anyway. It may get thrown out by the local Supreme Court, but I am not holding my breath…
Its their attempt at conatact tracing. It doesn’t sound that effective but its probably better than nothing. There’s no particular reason why you can’t put totally bogus information on that form; as protests go its a bit meaningless.
Tables are numbered at restraunts. You may not be aware of it, its rare to see actual numbers displayed on the furniture but it does happen occasionaly.
I and friends I have asked all put false information on those attendance forms. Not only because we don’t want to be stalked by the corona police, but because anyone can easily use their phone to photograph all our names, addresses and telephone numbers.
I’m wondering how long it will be before you are ‘required’ to show your driver’s licence to prove your identity? And then your ‘immunity certificate’?
Proof of ID (drivers licence) in happening in Apollo Bay which is a coastal town 200 km from Melbourne (Australia). Melbourne went into lockdown a few weeks ago during the school holidays. A number of people with holiday homes come down to the Bay before the lockdown came into effect. Many local were very vocal that they should stay away. In the end, a number of shop keepers bowed to the rants that people unknown to them should ‘prove’ they had the right to be in town by showing ID. Completely illegal of course (service can’t be refused on these grounds) but this didn’t deter them.
People are awash with fear as the mind-virus has firmly gripped most inhabitants. Even though Apollo Bay hasn’t had a recorded case people are almost verging on the belief that the killer virus is sneaking its way along the coast and drifting fog-like through the forest. Neighbouring towns have tested positive and this ‘plague of death’ will descend upon us next.
I would be deeply bemused by all this I didn’t live here and have to face this nonsense every day. Various tentative attempts to inoculate folks with the mildest tincture of truth creates such a bug-eyed, frothy reaction that I no longer bother. Thankfully, there are a few pockets of resistance which provide solace, comfort and thoughtful nourishment (Off-Guardian being a primary one).
The fear/illusion virus seems to be working its way north – to me in qld. like you, otways, i am astounded that friends i had formerly considered intelligent, have swallowed the media hype 100 percent. Fortunately, there are a few folk locally who still live in reality and can at least question our mainstream media onslaught.
What happens if you go to a shop and claim to have forgotten everything but your money – unless they’re already cashless?
Haven’t heard of anyone who have has been outright refused as one party or the other (usually the shopkeeper) gives way to moderate pushback.
The ripple effect on the local facebook page has amplified the mood which leads to all sorts of snarling smugness. Average age in the Bay is 55. The place is full of entitled boomers who believe they have the right to either live forever or, at the very least, have their view dominate all others for the full term of their remaining years.
I’m actually in Melbourne at the moment staring back blankly at the disapproving glares directed towards my mask. It is stenciled in thick black ink with the word MYTH. Here, in Melbourne’s leafy Eastern suburbs, disapproval also reigns far beyond the reaches of knowledge, research and perspective.
Yet another way to divide and rule us, I am sad to say.
This is juicy, and perhaps proof that the “state” is a tad riled at you darn proper journalists with your darn bat shit cray crayzeee insistence on suplying links to not only current factual data but also historical data, the truth has always been hiding in plain signt and brave and principled journalists have bet their all! Isn’t this why they became journalists? to get that big scoop? isn’t uncovering government or corporate wrong doing an absolute must for ANY news journalist? anything less just means a “journalist” went to university to become PROPAGANDISTS!
Well done Off-G for putting the heebee jeebies up those fuckers who may one day all end up in jail, especially those spreaders in the 77th.
Echo every sentence you say. Nailed it.
The ‘establishment’ are rattled.
I’ve just been banned by Twitter following false reports by “Assad Must Go” people alleging “Hateful conduct.” One claimed “attempted murder.” I’m 68, worked addiction services, I’m on ScotGovs Protecting Vulnerable Adults Scheme and never had a parking ticket in my life. After the fact, they have since removed the header and pinned Tweet from my ex-page. A picture of the Red Army raising the Hammer and Sickle over the Reichstag during WW2. Dirty, stinking, hateful, fascist, imperialist bastards.
The MASK NAZI NSA twits down at Twitter do not like it when anyone posts something positive about Syria or something negative about Adolf Hitler.
Don’t hold back there, James. Let rip!
Welcome to the Maoist-Marxist-Fascist-Wokeist paradise. Now established in the West by billionaires. Just like “communism” in the East was sponsored by US financiers over a hundred years ago.
Modern Bolshevism.
A more appropriate term is CORPORATE FASCIST HELL — run by War Racketeer CIA-NSA technocrats, pump & dump bankster scammers and owned by OLIGARCH MOBSTER PSYCHOPATHS.
PS. Please leave poor Karl Marx’s name out of it. He was far from perfect but if he was alive today he would be horrified and enraged by the situation.
A rare rational comment pertaining to Marx.
We’re getting flak because we are directly over the target. Proceed as normal then I say! Up the off guardians!
I believe I have long been subject to censorship as subterfuge (as I’ll explain) when posting on the Unherd site, which is highly ironic, as it claims to be a platform for lesser heard opinions and viewpoints.
At first I seemed to have near total free speech posting there, but at a certain point, a month or so in, suddenly nearly all my comments seemed to end up in the spam folder (“this comment has been identified as spam”) for no apparent reason, and there is no way to complain as far as I can see once your comment has been marked as spam.
I posted a note to the moderator about the one below disappearing, which note was published, and two people replied saying they wanted to see my comment, but it did not reappear:
So here is “the spam” one. I wonder if readers will agree if it is, as I can’t see how, it just looks to me – having happened to me there numerous times now – that it is simply overt political censorship of views the editors or moderators don’t like, but they are sneakily censoring using such methods to avoid admitting that they are doing so, as it runs so counter to their “Mission Statement”:
“For me, the greatest irony of this, is that the so called liberal intellectuals, almost exclusively university trained, such as at the Guardian and the BBC and their American counterparts, are actually some of the most dictatorial people in human history, in particular by their almost blanket denial of free speech, meaning they cannot abide any criticism of either themselves personally, or of the philosophies they espouse, like globalisation, which effectively seeks to abolish nation states, national identities, and the culture and way of life and identity of most of the people living there.
For almost all human history, every people of every country have believed in the idea they <i>are </i>a people, and that they were even expected to die in fighting to preserve their nation, their people.
But suddenly, in this historically speaking, 5 minutes to midnight moment, all their leaders nearly seem to have suddenly betrayed them, and not only not repelled, but relentlessly encouraged and facilitated what they see as mass invasion, which all these governments have labelled “essential economic immigration” and labelled anybody who opposed it as racists and barbarians.
Whether the masses are racists and barbarians is not the issue, but even if we accepted some validity in those claims, these same intellectuals and politicians who call ordinary people “racists” and “bigots”, happily vote in favour and support wars (carried out by those they condemn) on people who never attacked us, like Iraq, in which the most savage mass murder, torture and intimidation and terror is enforced on millions of innocent people.
No doubt once again, all excused by some “high minded intellectual ideal” such as we had to remove a “dictator” who was “oppressing his own people”, but without even calculating if a better regime will result (the so called “exit strategy”) from the apparently incidental mass murder, blinding and laming of millions of people in far away places whose shrieks of terror, agony and dismembered and scattered body parts they will never see.
To take this attitude, to order and support the mass murder and terrorisation of millions of people we will never see, and never harmed us, shows a near total detachment from reality, a near total lack of concern for the fate of other people in other parts of the world.
Likewise, the same sort of intellectuals and politicians who support and order this mass murder, are fully supporting the lockdown, which in reality is mass murder of the older generation (those who are the most likely to be “populists”/”nationalists”) under the guise of trying to save their lives, by denying these 12 million over 65s and 20 million over 55s normal medical care – tests, treatment, operations – by diverting almost the entire health service into treating a dubious disease, which has killed almost entirely only already weak old people, or a few others with serious underlying health problems; and once again, the same mostly young (under 65 or 60) and healthy journalists, politicians and intellectuals, support forcibly masking these same old people, making it difficult for them to even breathe in many cases – there is a picture of a passed out old woman in a face mask on Twitter, lying on the floor, who undoubtedly felt too afraid for whatever reason to go out in public without a mask – whether scared of the virus or social demonisation or both for refusing to wear one.
So it appears that both the media and politicians of this ilk are now, though as yet hidden behind obfuscating intellectualism, starting to openly admit that democracy was a mistake, the masses are too uncivilised to be allowed to choose their leaders, and especially choose policies, such as rejecting the EU or supporting the clearly outmoded nationalism. So even if elections can’t actually be fully abolished as yet, all the authorities can be infiltrated in such a fashion that they overrule the democratic will of the masses.
Thus do we see now over four years later, no real steps have been taken except superficially to extricate the UK from the EU, and moreover, the unending mass immigration, which was almost entirely what the Brexit vote was about, as was the election of President Trump, at the rate of nearly 1 million every three years in the UK, continues almost totally unabated, and almost no effort is made to stop the illegal immigration, which the government has long admitted it doesn’t even know how much there is of.
The question the “liberal intellectuals” really need to answer, is whether this dictatorship that they are clearly attempting to impose on the masses, counter to their democratic will (most remain unconvinced, especially after the lockdown, that Boris Johnson is really their champion, and seriously intends to either stop mass immigration or carry out any genuine exit from the EU) can actually be sustainable.
Will they be able to control the masses with the army and police and drones and so on, if (my guess is it more when, than not if) the rioting breaks out, and as we know, can spread like wildfire now due to modern instant communications and news?
Because if the liberal authorities, who are fully endorsing the forcible mask wearing and in fact mass murder of the old due to deprivation of medical resources, are not certain they can hold law and order together, and contain rioting and possibly revolution even, they had really better stop now.”
So whether or not anybody agrees with the above political opinions I have expressed, I think they will agree that this certainly is not spam.
A great shame Unherd seem to be behaving this way (they just made my last comment disappear entirely, never published, not bothering with the “spam” business this time), as they have been a useful source of counter opinion, but that seems to be fading based on my recent inspections, and they seem to be coming out more and more on the side of orthodoxy and forcible mask wearing.
Perhaps Unherd is a narrative management outfit, and there are many others disguised as alternative platforms.
All the anti-lockdown campaign groups I’m seeing are right wing. Perhaps they’re allowed to exist.
Those enabling fascism will suffer too.
I doubt that. Freddie Sayers hosts “lockdown tv” on the platform. One of his videos was briefly banned on youtube, but reinstated.
https://unherd.com/author/freddie-sayers/
@nouserid, mass immigration is being created by :-
1) Migration routes via Libya and Sanaa which were, in turn, created by the illegal invasion of Libya, the US & Soros ie The West.
2) Unelected African leaders like Bashir & Afewerki who are placed in positions of power by the CIA ie The West.
3) The continued theft of Africa’s resources and manpower by mainly The West.
4) The ongoing CREATION & perpetuation of poverty in Africa and amongst Africans by mainly The West.
So pls don’t include my ppl and I in your otherwise very real list of frustrations, W e s t e r n e r. :D!
RahwaTG
Yes, I fully accept the Western authorities are responsible for much of the refugee problem and exploitation of the African and Asian nations, but there are also a great many (I believe the vast majority are) economic migrants, and it’s also often not the best people of any nation who tend to be immigrants to Western nations, but sometimes the worst and the most ambitious and greedy.
I favour a policy of sharing of resources better so that immigrants of all colour can develop the economies of their countries, and will prefer to stay where they are.
But when England (where nearly all the migrants come) is really a tiny country globally, only 1/3 the size of Texas but with roughly 3 times the population, so about 9 times more densely populated, it is not a solution for the several billion poorer people in the world including from Eastern Europe to come here, because there’s simply not enough space and resources here.
Our Western leaders support mass immigration basically as a form of cheap labour and slavery including using these poorer citizens of other nations en masse as prostitutes, so unsurprisingly many immigrants prefer drug dealing and crime because they soon realise that few of them will be treated with equality as they may have imagined.
So I’m sorry what our leaders are doing to your countries, but the only real future for all world nations can be to fight to get better leaders who actually represent their people instead of just dictating to them, as even our Western leaders are now so shamefully doing.
Good luck.
“The West” is really not giving the true perpetrators credit.
Sorry if I offend some alums but there is nothing particularly intelligent about “so called liberal intellectuals, almost exclusively university trained, such as at the Guardian and the BBC and their American counterparts.”
Entry to these universities is not, in most degrees, competitive except in the sense of competing to show you are the right sort of compliant material. At the top level, access is more akin to the gravy train that is “free to those who can afford to pay” (speaking metaphorically about access, not fees). Certain schools still have a reserved quota of places at Oxbridge. A “masters” has become a joke at in many disciplines – no more challenging than a diploma of 30 years ago. As we know of the Rhodes Scholars, you don’t compete to win one, you are chosen for manipulability: psychological tendencies, readiness to do anything without asking questions, with a tendency to present opportunities for blackmail should the occasion require.
And that’s not even addressing the preference of schools and universities for political correctness over critical thinking, and their fondness for fake specialisms such as grievance studies: a short cut to activism without the need to activate the brain.
Sorry if you’re in the kitchen or at the dinner table, but if the price of entry was to wolf a bowl of shit, it would do just as well as any other test of conformity. Kakistocracy is, after all, an established form by which those who presume to rule measure their own fitness for office.
No offense taken. I have enough experience with the U.S. equivalents of Oxbridge to confirm your claims.
Re: 9/11, you should inform the Newsguard idiots of the recent university study of WTC 7:
https://www.ae911truth.org/wtc7
In casue defying the laws of physics weren’t enough. The study is a step in the right direction but does not go far enough. There had to be explosives on about each floor, set off in sequence simultaneously, for a building to completely implode like that.
I suspect – can’t prove, but gather from examining their stats on my main blog – that Google Blogger cancels all Feedburner subscriptions if I say something they don’t like. This happened again a couple of days ago, now back to normal – suspiciously so, as all the subscriptions appear to have resumed at once, as though there’s a simple off/onswitch. Anyone able to comment (I’m not a pointyhead so can’t do techno investigation)?
I think they may also have somehow pushed the blog temporarily down the results a la shadowbanning.
Since Twitter, Facebook (incl. Messenger) and Google have now effectively replaced the postal services, should their activities as self-appointed censors now be targeted for legal regulation?
Yes yes it should and once a genious lawyer finds that loophole oh men they will have to payy
Warning: this link may be unsafe
https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/25/twitter-facebook-are-censoring-us-but-our-subscribe-feature-is-back/
The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful or associated with a violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service. This link could lead to a site that:
Learn more about unsafe links
Ignore this warning and continue
Isn’t this how all free online social media applications work?
Tried to post the Twitter warning about this dangerous site but your software told me that “the link is too long”. Not sure what that means.
try again with https://tinyurl.com/
Thanks but I see it was in the OG article anyway.
It would seem ‘Doc’ Billy Eugenics (in his quest to become the world’s first trillionaire and cull the untermenschen and useless eaters of the world) and BIG PHARMA are doing there damnedest to keeping the public from learning about their wholesale robbery scam.
“EUTHANASIA DEATH SHOT anyone?”
PolitiFact is funded by the Poynter Institute.
Among the founders of Poynter Institute are Google, Facebook, George Soros Open Society and the Washington Post which is owned by Jeff Bezos.
These names keep coming up to keep the COVID pantomime alive and it’s of course just a coincidence that these companies are making billions from current events.
They don’t want anybody challenging the official narrative and will try and discredit anyone challenging it.
When they claim that Off Guardian articles are false information they never say what’s false about them or make any attempt to provide the alleged ‘factual information’.
Tells me all I need to know.
Bezos is one sick slimy CORPORATE FASCIST OLIGARCH MOBSTER PSYCHOPATH puppy. Having his sleazy REPUBLICRAT political hacks forcibly shut down the Mom and Pop Brick and Mortar Store Competition so Amazon can PRICE GOUGE consumers even more.
PS. Not to mention the living Hell of working conditions inside those Amazon labor torture center warehouses or the fact he and his CORPORATE FASCIST OLIGARCH MOBSTER criminal associates intend to screw up our kids’ minds and futures by closing down the public schools.
A guy from nowhere… Jeff Bezos my arse.
Real name Jeffrey Preston Jorgenson-Gise, comes up with a globalist’s dream: the Agenda 21, universal shop for high-density living, no car needed, quarantine friendly, digital everything, your every purchase traced and recorded for posterity. Could Jeff Jorgenson-Gise have any connections?
“Despite being a teen mother, it’s not like Jackie Bezos grew up in a trailer park or anything. Her father was a high level official with the Atomic Energy Commission who supervised the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore laboratories. He was major influence on Jeff growing up, with his wide-ranging knowledge of science.” https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2014/4/25/forget-jeff-bezos-his-parents-mike-and-jackie-are-the-people.html
Jeff’s grandfather, Lawrence Preston Gise (known as Preston) (1915-1995) was appointed by Congress to be western regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque. Operating out of headquarters in Albuquerque, he supervised the region’s 26,000 employees at the Sandia, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore laboratories.
Before joining the AEC, Gise (rhymes with dice) had worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development arm of the Department of Defense that was created in 1958 and the arm which created the internet. Bezos was one of the first shareholders in Google, when he invested $250,000 in 1998.
Young Jeffrey Jorgenson idolized his grandfather, learning to herd cattle on grandpa’s 25,000 acres Cotulla, Texas Ranch. He was a mean hand at castrating bulls, too. You might say that was good practice for his future role.
“Jeff Bezos my arse.”
You have my deepest sympathy Moneycircus. Your arse is hideously deformed …
I guess I’ll have to carry that burden )
… we all have our crosses to bear …
Sit on it and make sure jeff gets a nose full, lol.
Great comments Mc.
Today’s a bleak day.
A close friend has become depressed. He feels the repression. Suffering from lifelong asthma, he’s avoided wearing face masks for as long as he can, but he feels compelled to wear one next time he goes shopping, just in case nice members of the public challenge him.
To keep my spirits up I’ve been following people on Twitter who are campaigning against lockdown. One is Simon Dolan and his organisation ‘Keep Britain Free’, who’ve done some good work.
This morning Mr Dolan retweeted a spoof tweet of a montage of photos of ‘zombies’, except one photo was of an actual war victim who’d had his face blown off. This poor man’s tragedy was being used for laughs so I tried to contact him via his campaign site to complain.
There was no ‘contact us’ tab. There was however a shopping basket icon and Keep Britain Free merchandise for sale. (Profiting from tyranny?). One of his blog posts included an Ayn Rand ‘selfishness is virtuous’ quote.
My heart sank.
I have not seen any left wing groups, socialists or trades unions fighting against lockdown, only right wingers, millionaires, the religious right and libertarians.
The one single chink of light has been Off Guardian. Sincere thanks to Off Guardian for providing people with a space to speak.
People need to unite regardless of their political preferences, as Joel Skousen says in part 2 of his chat with Sarah Westall at the 13-minute mark.
Encouraging and fascinating, thanks.
While it’s good to get us to put aside political differences it’s going to be impossible. Many a fool thinks covid is a Chinese communist conspiracy. Instead of an excuse to have a recession and palm the blame onto a non lethal virus and to control more of what you can access. So what happens when a socialist or communist sees someone with a anti communist banner or placard or slogans and keeps blaming imagined commies?
Why are the Chinese billionaires any better than the Gates billionaires? Xi attends Davos etc, the tyrant club is global, not national. It is as much a “China” conspiracy as a “USA” conspiracy as a “UK” conspiracy etc.
I guess you will be opting for the CCP vaccine rather than the Gates vaccine.
Agree, the mainstream news is awash with tittle tattle and non events. In the US Trump and his supporters seem entirely oblivious to the real story.This is about to get messy.
There has for long been a wedge between “the Left” and “conspiracy theory”. Consequently there are many – to put it bluntly – bloody obvious scams that go on but the “Left” don’t catch on till decades later and then comment in the most infuriatingly obtuse way as if it’s a revelation while you say “Well DUH!”
Any thoughts on why that might be ?
Why are conspiracy theories generally more associated with/ accepted by those on the Right ?
I am mindful of a statement endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn (last year I think) which singled out 9/11 theories, and that denounced anyone alleging a connection between 9/11 and Israel, specifically making reference to ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theories’. Many of the controversial ‘investigations in Labour Party ‘antisemitism” involved member’s convictions on this issue.
So how is one to integrate such a statement ? Were we supposed to just ignore evidence so as to maintain virtuous ideological positions ? (I asked). Many on the Left are happy to point to evidence that Saudi Arabia were involved, but avoid discussion of evidence that Israel were. Why is that ?
Israel definitely were involved in 9/11. If one agrees with that statement, then any faction who are incapable of discussing the matter cannot claim any political legitimacy. They lack full understanding of the geopolitical world in which we live.
If it was all made clear I might consider throwing in a quid or two to Corbyn’s legal campaign, but until then…
Whoever reflexively votes down every single one of my comments with no rebuttal : this merely confirms a sense that there you don’t have one.
Crank – I have noticed many times on this site, that people vote comments down without leaving a reply. Obviously they have no real counter argument, otherwise they would be more than happy to put their point across. I think these people are just on here to agitate and their ‘thumbs down’ has no real meaning.
With reference to the mind control that is the conspiracy phobic mantra, if it so happened that this astonishingly powerful idiocy generator stopped working on the majority, then the ruling class would be in deep shit. Now since the Left are anti-capitalist, the combination between Leftism and refusal to fall for the conspiracy phobia bullshit would be lethal. Since the Right are pro-capitalist, it isn’t so important if they see conspiracies where there, in fact, ARE conspiracies. And so, it was essential to ensure that the conspiracy phobia mantra sunk into the Left more than elsewhere. Furthermore, if conspiracy theories were linked with the Right, then that would only serve to repel the Left even more from such theories. Hence the aforementioned wedge.
The left are idealists, they wish for a better world and they want to believe that leaders can be good. The right are not idealists, they accept the world the way it currently is and believe that all leaders are inherently bad.
I would say that to critique anything at all is to imply things can be better.
Not really. I can improve my lot without thinking I need to improve the world – the system that is the world. I am not an idealist, I see opportunities and I improve my lot by taking them. I have no delusions that I can change anything in the way the world works or fix how it badly treats some while allowing others to be pampered.
To critique light because it cannot travel faster than light does not mean that I believe light can do better and can travel faster than light.
I think we are fast approaching the point where the notion of “improving your lot” – as if you are totally detached from the rest of reality – is becoming an increasingly untenable proposition. Actually – I would say it’s always been an illusion anyway.
This might hold if you had no choice as to the meanings you give and thus receive from whatever conditions you meet.
I have an opportunity to improve my experience of whatever is going on by the way I am choosing to see it and the purpose to which it is being applied.
Reality is participated in. Truth can be masked over or transparently aligned in. If we mask over truth we generate an incoherent reality no matter how intensely the narrative operates to suppress, redefine or ignore the dissonance.
Thinking seems to make a world – but thinking has this propoerty of operating as if you are totally detached from the rest of reality – and it is this illusion that is breaking down. Hence the doubling down of the illusion of control under computer modelled systems of limitation and conflict management.
Because we have developed a capacity of mind as limitation and conflict by which to rule out of a ‘private masked agenda’ (sic) – we have the opportunity to release invested allegiance in such thinking as the willingness and desire for truth as the redeeming or repurposing of tools of conflict and separation to serve a reintegrative. The world is a ‘fruit’ or result of the purpose you are actively giving allegiance to. That we can vacillate or shift between conflicting thoughts and yet operate a narrative continuity is our capacity to not know what we do for we are unaware (for the most part) of the definitions and beliefs by which we automatically respond according to past learning rather than a present discernment.
However I understand that in our current terms, we are painted into a corner. At what point does futility release its persistent loop to a native curiosity from the being of you that may not have registered in you since you were a very young child?
Before the collapse of the USSR and the Waco and Oklahoma FBI murder sprees the right was given the mantle of conspiracy theorists and certain people some on the left some on the Center some of the right but they don’t know it were told by lying media’s (and they listened to what many knew or know is their enemy) that only deranged racist fundie religious deranged KKK members believe conspiracies. And now the most of left fake and actual don’t even dare touch upon simple stuff like jfk or even 9/11 for fear Facebook friends will laugh at them and call them right wing racists. It’s a bit more complex than my small explanation but it’s valid and I can’t be arsed to type anymore
http://www.globalresearch.ca is another good left site
Your mate should do as I do and lie about lung problems. No ones going to check and if they tried it would highlight the mini nazis in our midst
Your friend has an exemption so is not compelled to wear a face mask when shopping.
Exemption is not the issue. Anxiety from being confronted by a member of the public is the issue. (If you see Cressida Dick, UK police commissioner) calling, on national radio, for people to shame non mask wearers.
People are being verbally abused – exemption or not.
This culture has been deliberately cultivated by our rulers.
Well I don’t recognise any “ruler”, though I understand why you chose to put it that way.
To your point. I quote you:
“he feels compelled to wear one next time he goes shopping, just in case nice members of the public challenge him.”
And some of these maskophiles wear them “just in case” they get the virus.
Granted your friend is more likely to be abused by one of these nutjobs than catching covid19, but it’s still about fear.
If your friend is asthmatic his life may depend on his not wearing one.
This is not a joke. The things are dangerous! My dad had to wear one for a hospital visit and said he felt faint. And he has no history of lung or breathing issues.
I repeat. If your friend is asthmatic he should not wear a face covering.
I realise. This is why I’m so depressed about it.
Toby Young also hosts “lockdownsceptics”, but he might be a bit too right wing for you.
He has recently said he will never vote Tory again though.
People don’t realise how serious things are. Any resistance is valuable.
I still feel positive about Keep Britain Free… Their legal challenges will almost certainly be futile, but it is good that people are taking some action. Their website claims the shop is not for profit — perhaps the monies go towards legal costs.
Anyway, I got 250 of these flyers that I’m going to glue about town — it seems more impactful than my scrawling chalk pavement messages…
https://www.keepbritainfree.com/product-page/kbf-flyers-design-2
Along with Off-G, I’ve found UK Column to be another chink of spirit-lifting light.
That Simon Dolan was, as far as I’m aware…a ‘no show’ at an advertised meet in Hyde Park Sunday gone!
He retweets Breitbart content and he lives in Monaco. I doubt he cares about the poor. But credit where it’s due I suppose. I don’t see many people fighting back against this nightmare.
It’s the working class who will suffer the most. The rich will be exempt.
‘ I don’t see many people fighting back against this nightmare.’
I do. But you have to use your eyes in order to see it.
Yes. You’re right. I mean establishment figures, unions, politicians etc.
Well for the unions I agree. But that is more about me being sentimental about how unions fight for their members (they don’t, but it is a nice sentiment isn’t it?)
Better face it and give up hope that the traditional unions, politicians, establishment figures will fight the good fight.
But let’s not forget that figures from unions, political parties, establishment constitute less than .1% of the total population. Why stare yourself blind on .1%.
I look at the 99.9%. Of which many are fooled. But maybe even more are not.
There is such a thing as the silent majority. Focus your eyes on them
Just about the only person left I know is ‘left wing’ and heavily imbued with identity politics ideas. He believes the police should be handing out facemasks and last time he contacted me went on about ‘alt right’ sites and ‘conspiracy theories’ and stated that information from The Corbett Report had been ‘deemed inacurrate’.
He went by what the fact checkers had said. I pointed out to him who is actually funding these ‘fact checkers’ and pointed out where this was all going.
We’ve all seen how hysterical the WSWS has been to the point you have to wonder if they are controlled opposition.
You’re also right about who has opposed the lockdowns and censorship the most.
As someone who identifies as anti capitalist and anti imperialist, I find it pretty mind boggling that the very people who should be opposing this fascism, are the ones most supportive of it.
Bonkers.
I know a few left wing-ish friends (my mother was a socialist) of the Nye Bevan, Labour Party variety who all also oppose the lockdown. It seems the organised left is infiltrated or controlled opposition.
Of the anti lockdown groups I’m seeing now; the big one in Ireland and Keep Britain Free etc, my gut instinct tells me that they’re controlled far right opposition. I don’t trust any of them.
Yep… I know that easily, the majority of my Facebook friends firmly believe in Capitalism, and are clearly right wing or socially conservative.
Quite a number are diehard Trump supporters (even Aussies) and I’d say 30-40% believe Qanon and believe Q ‘has a plan’. I really try not to go there with any of them.
What I do challenge tho is occasionally someone will claim this is a ‘communist plot’ and they (0.01%) want to impose ‘communism’ on the World. When I ask them how on earth the World’s richest billionaires and largest Corporations could be communist or socialist, there’s no response.
Only a very small minority on my friends list seem to be explicitly left wing in their outlook. The World is upside down and back to front.
Enjoy your week E✌️
All the problems we’re experiencing now stem from the capitalist ruling class. Pharma shareholders are not communists. They want money.
Exactly. They are all full bloodied right wing capitalists!
“I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
― Malcolm X
Simples.Classic,Reminder…
Meanwhile, here’s Jeremy Corbyn’s fund raiser for his legal costs. He’s being sued by some dodgy character.
“Coincidentally Facebook and Twitter have moved against us in unison as if they were one entity.”
They are. Twitter’s “head of editorial” in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa also serves as a part-time officer for the British Army’s information unit, the 77th Brigade,
Pentagon Kills LifeLog Project 02.04.04
Facebook is launched 02.04.04
The Pentagon canceled its so-called LifeLog project, an ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person’s entire existence the same day that Facebook launched.
Gordon MacMillan, who joined the social media company’s UK office six years ago, is a reservist with the 77th Brigade. The 77th Brigade uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, as well as podcasts, data analysis and audience research to conduct what the head of the UK military, General Nick Carter, describes as “information warfare”.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/twitter-executive-also-part-time-officer-uk-army-psychological-warfare-unit
https://www.wired.com/2004/02/pentagon-kills-lifelog-project/
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/facebook-launches-mark-zuckerberg
good points M – nice to know that uk taxpayers are funding the british army to spy and censor the british people – why do we continue to pay them??? (77th brigade and 15 signals)
You got a thumbs down off someone because you pointed out the Brit army do evil things
Koba – You notice there are at least 2 people on here who are putting a thumbs down to everything, but they never put a comment. Obviously they have no real counter argument, otherwise they would be more than happy to put their point across. I think these people are just on here to agitate and their ‘thumbs down’ has no real meaning.
Ignore the downvotes. They’ll be from 77th Brigade or some security agency.
Since OffGuardian began its excellent coverage on the panicdemic, we’ve had lots of the little critters sniffing about here doing the bidding of their psychopathic masters. C’est La Vie…
N’deedwas2be…
Expected, as territory,
N’futures brighter than,
Any corporate goal.
Their home territory.
Until now…
Oh dear… It only took 3 days to reply.
I got sidetracked, and was thinking is this code, (NENATU) and then with the insanity going on in Melbourne, forgot…
It’s mind boggling (in a depressing way) how so many can swallow the covid narrative from politicians and the media (especially here in Melbourne) despite all the contradictions, and then behave like spectators in a Coliseum towards people questioning the facemasks and lockdowns.
How are things going in Bulgaria? What’s the situation there at present?
Has there been much rainfall? (for your garden).
The psychopathic 0.01% are going all out this time. I’ve been on the World Economic Forum website a few times, and they’ve got everything all laid out in plain sight: ‘The Great Reset’
I value your judgement, so what’s your assessment of where this is going?
Hope your weekend is good👍
Yes, wasn’t the programming for social media stolen from Leader Technologies?
Facebook is a masterpiece of global surveillance: idiots keep self-reporting everything about themselves so that intelligence services don’t even need to lift a finger to map out your entire life, political opinions, read your private messages and map social connections. It is the most insidious form of literally “spyware” ever devised.
Neither of the sites prohibit access today. But what about the future? I’m sure we can all remember the early days of Facebook and Twitter (which I don’t use much) when no respectful comment was prohibited. Now we have these fact-checkers peddling misinformation that belongs in the sheep-dip.
‘Fact checkers’ are peddling all sorts of disinformation. They are scam merchants who are contributing to all sorts of problems, including terrorism, warmongering, scaremongering and concealing top level corruption and child abuse.
These people will end up causing a war with Russia or China one of these days. If the White Helmets are capable, through one staged chemical attack, they are through their continuous lies and censoring of research and analysis. They are enemies of the state and all decent folk.
The WAR RACKETEER CIA-NSA MOOCHES want the publicly funded welfare entitlement handout “gravy train” to continue.
In the words of SMEDLEY BUTLER. “TO HELL WITH WAR!”
The very title “fact checker” is deeply patronizing. Anyone who allows themselves to be steered by these “big mommies and daddies” deserves nothing but contempt.
There is no excuse for being on Facebook or Twitter: if you need either to stay in touch with friends then maybe they aren’t friends. Send an email or write a letter, both are the way to keep in touch: but not good solutions for the lazy. If you want to discuss you last meal with them, rather than put a picture of your fish and chips on Facebook, try caring just a little bit about them and give them a call.
I do not have any social media accounts: I spend many hours every weekend talking to friends and relatives on the phone.
Totally agree. Another thing I don’t get is the fact that so many sites who rail against the Oligarchs use payment systems like PayPal, Patreon, etc which are all owned by said Oligarchs. Same thing for Amazon, Microsoft, Apple. My personal BDS movement isn’t only against Israel, but against all giant corporations when I possibly can. Don’t have a superphone, but a knockoff of an old Nokia used for occasionally making and receiving calls and messages. My son-in-law is coming down from Paris and will hopefully take the time to help me install Linux Mint.
Cheers from SW France where it’s going to get really hot – 35-38°C – next week.
Very good points
You mean chuck feckers ft. Ladybird’s latest virtue signalling monologue monopoly, tayloring swift mind control of kiddies brains, prepping for paedophilia nirvana neverland nutjobs?
Check who funds whom, for tolls.
Like the BBC… ?