This Week in the New Normal #94
Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly (or, in this case, four-monthly) chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1. All our problems could be fixed if we just gave Big Pharma more money
We covered Labour’s incredibly dystopian plan to accept bribes from Big Pharma to inject the unemployed with experimental drugs a few days ago.
But the pro-weight loss injections propaganda doesn’t stop there, on October 14th Sky News headlined:
Thousands denied weight loss jab due to slow NHS rollout – with some having to wait two years
And goes on to report:
Thousands of people with severe obesity are being denied access to effective treatment because the NHS rollout of the weight loss jab Wegovy is happening far more slowly than planned, research by Sky News shows.
Freedom of Information requests reveal that just 800 people had been prescribed the drug through hospital weight-loss services by the end of April – despite estimates by the Department of Health that 13,500 should have started treatment by then.
I’ll finish this section with a question: Why does this article exist? Is it…
a) Because Sky News really empathizes with overweight patients and wants them to be healthy and happy?
OR
b) Because the owners of Sky News have shares in Big Pharma and want to rake in that sweet sweet NHS funding while making people compliant permanent patients reliant on drugs and injections to function?
2. Yet another meat scare
Tons of food have been recalled and destroyed across the US following a “suspected” listeria infection.
The AP reported two days ago:
Listeria recall grows to 12 million pounds of meat and poultry, some of it sent to US schools
Here’s a fun game to play at home – read the AP article, and drink a shot every time they use a word like “potential”.
The good news is that the potentially massive listeria outbreak has yet to cause a single illness, and the CDC isn’t planning to investigate.
…almost like it’s just about programming people to believe meat = dangerous, and conditioning them to accept sudden shortages of certain foods.
But maybe I’m paranoid.
3. Child murder and “smacking” are not the same
Following the death of Sara Sharif and the arrest of her parents and uncle for murder, a Guardian columnist has taken to her keyboard to ask:
How many more children like Sara Sharif will be killed before smacking is banned?
The problem with this question is that Sara Sharif wasn’t “smacked”. She was – allegedly – tied to a radiator, burned with cigarettes and beaten to death with a cricket bat.
…all of which is very much illegal already. Hence the trial.
None of that is the same as “smacking”. It really shouldn’t need to be said, but nevertheless, here we are.
Now, that’s not to say I’m in favour of indiscriminate physical punishment of children, but as with all suggested new laws the reasons they shouldn’t exist are important.
In the age of the overreaching government attempting to undermine the family unit, alongside the ever broader definitions of “assault” and “violence”, a law which could permit frivolous prosecution of perfectly decent parents is a really bad idea.
BONUS: “They’re making fun of you” moment of the week
It might seem like a perverse joke from a different age, but the UK is still trying to engage people on the Skripal narrative.
This week the ongoing inquiry was told that Sergei Skripal was lucky enough to survive an attack with the “deadliest nerve agent to ever exist” – a chemical thought to be purely theoretical prior to the Salisbury attack – because the paramedic accidentally gave him some nerve agent antidote by mistake.
They really do think that little of us.
It’s not all bad…
OK, the election is a sham. And OK, the media misfires are likely orchestrated to embarrass the candidate destined to lose. But still, this is just funny…
*
All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the Iran “leaks” or the latest developments in lab-grown meat.
There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
What does “smack” mean in this case? Belt? Punch? Slap? Whallop? Jab? Clobber? Hit?
Beat? Strike? Smite? Bat? I wish my adoptive parents had been held accountable for all those things. They rationalized their abusive behavior by saying, you’re gettin’ it easy compared to……etc.
We can’t know, since “smack” isn’t described or defined. (BTW, I even tried the link to the column but it “was unable to produce” the archived text.)
I take “smack” to mean essentially an extemporaneous slap, i.e. physical punishment without the ritual of preparation. Of course, as a parochial school graduate I know that even a “smack” across the knuckles can be a formalized ritual.
That aside, I only wanted to chime in about the salt-in-the-wound “rationalization”. For me, thankfully, corporal punishment at home was rare and judicious. But I’ve always despised those offhand “tough love” justifications.
Once a friend and I were discussing “nuns (and Christian Brothers) gone wild” incidents that we’d witnessed. Typically, the twist was that the child who was punished hadn’t even committed the alleged wrongdoing in the first place. My friend’s mom, a sweetheart but a devout Catholic, interrupted to blithely say, “Oh, well even if he (the victim) didn’t do it that time, he probably did something else wrong that he got away with. So it all evens out.”
She was being somewhat, but not entirely, facetious. Similarly, my father and his siblings attended a parochial school (well before World War II) where corporal punishment was meted out much more freely than in our generation. It used to drive me crazy listening to the oldsters affectionately recall the abuses with gratitude, upon the theory that being periodically whacked, even if innocent, kept them on the straight and narrow. 👊 😠
UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE! My dog is in hiding I am laughing so hard. All of my opinions have been washed away by that cartoon. What were you talking about again!
Physically assaulting (yes, this includes smacking) your child makes you an abusive parent and appalling human being.
Smacking or any kind of violence, threats and displays of extreme anger is NOT how you effectively exercise authority, and you need education before having children.
Completely understand smacking. That familiar ringing in your ear when a hand perfectly pops your eardrum. The familiar whiplash pain in your neck that can last for weeks from a direct hit. Then there is that familiar sound of a hand sliding over your hair from a glancing blow caused from ducking and preventing a direct hit. The glancing blow is usually followed up by closed fist because you had the audacity to duck the slap. Rule of thumb: Ducking will only get you in more trouble and lead to a stronger punishment. And don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault. The shit we used to do…….. We and my cousins were all in the same boat. A cousin and I were commiserating over our abuse while drinking a beer a while back. We’d all be packed together in a tiny house “celebrating” a holiday and one of the 4 fathers would get ticked off and remove his belt. And all 16 of us boys would go running to hide in a back bedroom. We all knew the sound of a tinkling belt buckle and learned to get the hell out of the room and not ask questions. We laughed our asses off when recounting the fond memories. The girls in the family could not relate. They never got hit or beaten by a belt. Often they were the cause of the conflict…… Kind of like politicians…….
Meanwhile in the Old Normal:
Modern Israel celebrates its first anniversary of Old Testament style genocide
https://youtu.be/BlFvGy7NO3w?si=hWa7XlLZBZEU-TZK
…Probably fewer than will be killed after smacking is banned and the last vestiges of parental authority are finally eradicated by the State.
But ban it they will.
Here in Soviet Wales, the UK’s main testing ground for the New Left’s dystopian projects (all unvoted-on, unnecessary and unpopular — e.g. 20mph speed limits and trials of UBI), it is already a criminal offence for a parent to smack a child.
That said, there are those who are dim enough to believe that criminalisation of smacking will somehow end child abuse. Most of them likely have degrees and read The Guardian: those who have degrees and read The Guardian tend to believe that traditional parenting is abusive and should be outlawed by the State. It’s almost an article of faith for them.
But those who believe such things tend to get bitten by reality.
For example, the left-wing woman next door to me has refused to smack her young son, regardless of how badly behaved he is. When he was very young (before he could speak) I would hear her shrieking at him, “Stop pulling my hair!”: it was impossible not to hear, since it was so loud and frequent — evidently the little scamp enjoyed the fantastic noise that she made when he got his mitts on her barnet and gave it a good yank. Of course, being an infant, he didn’t understand English, but this didn’t deter her — she continued with her noisy but futile attempts to get him to stop pulling out her hair, for many months. Naturally, if she’d just smacked his hand when he’d first tried it, he would have soon equated hair-pulling with a short, sharp shock and desisted.
Her refusal to smack also prolonged “the terrible twos” — the boy found that he too could scream his head off, and that there would be no real adverse consequences for doing so. And so, even at four years old, he would shriek at the top of his voice whenever he did not get his own way. Every evening at around half past six he would scream the house down because he wanted to continue playing on the X-box rather than to go to bed. Even today, at school age, he’s still prone to screaming tantrums when his will is thwarted.
And now, all parents in Wales must do as this silly woman has done, or face prosecution. One wonders how many kids will grow up maladjusted due to this government overreach. It’s essentially a form of state-mandated parental neglect.
the news story about the NHS just sounds like boilerplate muckraking to bash a government agency with charges of inefficiency, nothing particularly sinister here, especially since the current government is supposedly liberal and this media outlet is supposedly conservative
state agencies meddling in the business of child-rearing is definitely something that gives me the willies, even though, or perhaps precisely because, my mom worked briefly as a social worker who had the authority to take away people’s kids at her discretion and send them into foster care
I used to think corporal punishment was a bad idea because it reinforced the cycle of violence and legitimized as a model for the young the use of force to dominate others, but lately I’ve been asking myself whether forms of emotional punishment are in any sense qualitatively different, since they can inflict just as much pain, be applied just as arbitrarily, teach lessons that are just as toxic about patterns of behavior to imitate for solving conflicts
the focus on slapping or spanking, apart from the kinds of brutal extreme cases that result in serious injury, seems to reflect cultural bias without rational underpinning, a bit like the old church doctrine that permitted thumbscrews when inquisitors tortured their victims but prohibited any methods that involved the shedding of blood because that was according to some arcane scriptural analysis the sine qua non of un Christian like coercion
Fat people are normally rich and wealthy personalities because they can afford it. Women find fat men attractive because of their heavier wallet.
Therefore fat people are off cause a especial focus group in our society as a group of VIP people who matters and take up space, where other groups easily become invisible skeletons and non-VIPs.
Not these days. Rich people are more often than not of a healthy weight, because they can afford an organic, non-GMO diet, instead of loading their body’s with trash like poor people do.
A new spin on organic food: it may be contaminated by microbes. Go for the agrochemical-drenched scientific alternative.
GMO frankenfish is also failing…
https://non-gmoreport.com/gmo-salmon-factory-in-canada-for-sale-as-company-faces-deepening-crisis/
Ofcom: Clear link between online posts and violent disorder
Ricky: Promoting an Israeli flag on Downing Street has given the green light to slaughter tens of thousands of children.
You choose.
Fk Ofcom
Strange story or not ?
Anybody else find Jeremy Clarkson’s mea culpa a bit odd ?
Having had a heart problem sorted out by the NHS, Jeremy said it’s all his fault for drinking too much wine.
“Stay away from the bad stuff, kids”
Jeremy Clarkson ?
Hmmm.
Q.
Why can’t Jeremy Clarkson and Donald Trump be in the same room together?
A.
Cause there ain’t no room in the world big enough for both of their egos.
Conveniently coincidental this woke in new normal is relaunched after an long hatis and appears not long before the USA election’s with a usual MSM Alt media ex lefties poke at labour and of course Kalama.
Even Catt’s article the other day was easy on Donald, yet when full steam ahead on the others which is what ”This Week in the New Normal” does and was known for, as it did get called ”OFF Ardern” as you used to mention her up to 3 times a week and was very very very soft and hardly mentioned the right lot.
BTW the fat vaccine has been heavily heavily promoted in London biggest paper own by DM called Metro and had ad on tubes & front windows spaces and in chemists and Boots in 2023 under the conservatives.
The words appear to be English but it’s just gobbledygook
The Daily Fail group through the Daily Fail has run several articles on the dangers of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy. Below is one such example. So if they are promoting it in the Metro then they are doing the opposite in the Fail.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13900767/Ozempic-Wegovy-caused-3-000-Brits-fall-ill-warning-issued-weightloss-drugs.html
On the subject of Jacinda the talking horse, are you seriously defending her?
She who said during the scamdemic that she is “the single source of truth” for New Zealanders. Also, she who was a protege of Teflon Tone, no less.
It’s “the people” who are a sham. And the selection is what you’d expect when the 99% are retarded. However, that doesn’t mean that the selection is unimportant. Nor does it mean that there is necessarily a singular, powerful entity which is coordinating the theatrics and doing the selection. Instead, there are multiple power centres; these have aligned into two competing factions; they are both vying to be in control of the selection process; gaining that control requires among other things the building of popular acquiescence; and November is possibly the most consequential selection in living memory.
During 2012 Obama vs Romney “campaigns” for US president, Soros was asked his opinion. He said, “They’re the same but with different people around them.” The only solution is for US to be broken up into at least 3 separate countries. US elites call this “partitioning” when they discuss their plans to break up Russia and hand out chunks to various and sundry.
That was the plan of Kissinger & Co (i.e. the Globalists). The US oligarchy, however, had other ideas!
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/the-end-of-pax-americana-how-western-decline-became-inevitable/256388
The End of Pax Americana: How Western Decline Became Inevitable
The Euro-Atlantic world had a long run of global dominance, but it is coming to an end.
By Christopher Layne
April 26, 2012
The Euro-Atlantic world had a long run of global dominance, but it is coming to an end.
But even during the Cold War’s last two decades, the seeds of American decline had already been sown. In a prescient–but premature–analysis, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger believed that the bipolar Cold War system would give way to a pentagonal multipolar system composed of the United States, Soviet Union, Europe, China and Japan.
—
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/07/kissinger-review-gewen-realism-liberal-internationalism
Welcome Back to Kissinger’s World
Neoconservatism has died, and liberal internationalism is discredited. Perhaps it’s time to return to the ideas of one of the last century’s greatest realists.
June 7, 2020
By Michael Hirsh, a columnist for Foreign Policy.
The answer to the future of U.S.-China relations—and the global peace and stability that largely depend on getting them right—may lie in the past, Gewen suggests. It’s no small coincidence that Kissinger and his philosophy had their moment in the sun at a time of U.S. weakness, during the Vietnam War, civil unrest, Watergate, and the stagflation of the 1970s, when diplomats had to find common ground and a balance among the major powers. Because a weakened and disordered Washington may be in an analogous place today vis-à-vis China, Kissinger’s favorite subject and the focus of his greatest diplomatic triumphs. In particular, Washington needs a reversion to tried and tested realpolitik that will be deft enough to turn great-power rivalry into a stable and peaceable modus vivendi. As former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, a scholar of China who has watched Beijing’s rise up close, wrote in a recent essay about the coronavirus pandemic in Foreign Affairs: “The uncomfortable truth is that China and the United States are both likely to emerge from this crisis significantly diminished. Neither a new Pax Sinica nor a renewed Pax Americana will rise from the ruins. Rather, both powers will be weakened, at home and abroad. And the result will be a continued slow but steady drift toward international anarchy.”
—
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2022-03-14/return-pax-americana
https://archive.ph/yVcbX
The Return of Pax Americana?
Putin’s War Is Fortifying the Democratic Alliance
By Michael Beckley and Hal Brands
March 14, 2022
Putin has now inadvertently done the United States and its allies a tremendous favor. In shocking them out of their complacency, he has given them a historic opportunity to regroup and reload for an era of intense competition—not just with Russia but also with China—and, ultimately, to rebuild an international order that just recently looked to be headed for collapse.
—
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-great-strategist-henry-kissinger-turns-100-china-ukraine-realpolitik-81b6f3bb
https://archive.ph/0o3iI
Henry Kissinger Surveys the World as He Turns 100
The great strategist sees a globe riven by U.S.-China competition and threatened by fearsome new weapons and explains why he now thinks Ukraine should be in NATO.
By Tunku Varadarajan
May 26, 2023
Mr. Kissinger leaves no doubt that he believes in a Pax Americana and in the need “to defend the areas of the world essential for American and democratic survival.” But the ability to “execute it politically,” he says, “has declined sharply, and that is our overriding problem now.” He ascribes this political weakness to a decline in belief in the U.S. in its own historical ambitions and institutions. “There’s no element of pride and direction and purpose left,” he laments, as American leaders grapple with angst generated by events of “300 years ago.”
Glad to see ‘This Week in the New Normal’ is back after a nearly three month hiatus.
The paramedic that ‘treated’ Sergei Skripal just happened to be carrying a nerve agent antidote. Very convenient – it must be standard issue in NHS ambulance kit, just in case. After all nerve agent poisoning is an every day occurrence…not!
For future reference, all NHS paramedics should carry a packet of £1 baby wipes from Tesco (other supermarkets are available). The UKHSA advised the general public to wipe away any suspected Novichok residue with a baby wipe or a damp cloth!
https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2018/07/06/amesbury-nerve-agent-incident-answering-your-frequently-asked-questions/
Whew !
Went to high school one day and drove my stepdad’s truck. He had a gun rack in the back window and a couple long rifles displayed and ready to go for early morning hunting. Drove into the school parking lot and glanced at the myriad other pickups parked there for the day, many with the same gun rack/long rifle setup in full view. It was hunting season. Walked into the school, no SWAT teams, metal detectors, pigs, nothing, and went to class. Third period, me and another kid were acting up and the teacher, Mr. B., told us to go out in the hall and wait. We went out and he soon came out with his signature paddle, solid hickory about a foot long with a 2 foot handle, and about 6 holes drilled thru the base for added aerodynamic velocity. We each took our 3 swats and returned to class, and Mr. B. continued on with his teaching. After sixth period, we all left, got in our pickup trucks with our guns, and went about our days.
I can’t explain it either.
Go ask your wife, she can probably explain it perfectly.
Three hundred million guns now.
That’s a lot of trucks!
Of course Sky News pities fat people, because they’re the biggest (in two ways) demographic group that believes all the shit Sky spew.
Tens of thousands of customers glued to their screens.
Maybe if Rupert has been given a bit more discipline and lot more Love and attention, he wouldn’t have become such a ruthless prick.
What is “smacking”? Isn’t that what you do with your lips after tasting a particularly scrumptious morsel?
not a ‘scrumptious morsel’ but instead ‘solecism tours rump’…
😉
Still sounds weird to me. Is that English?