Where's the scientific evidence that lockdowns work?

Big Doug was advising us today that we shouldn't make plans for Easter weekend. The national propaganda network was simultaneously advising us that the pandemic in Ontario is "completely out of control."

So you know what's coming. 

The world has been playing the lock-down game for a year now, and the more you look at the comparative stats, the less certain you will be about the efficacy of lockdowns. 

That's due mainly to the entire pandemic event having become a highly politicized cultural touchstone. For example, compare the pandemic stats among the four most populous states. Two of them are Republican, two or them are Democrat. True to every cliched expectation, the Republican states are open for business, while the Dem states are masked up and locked down.

There is absolutely nothing in the numbers that can definitively tell you lockdowns work, but there is plenty that suggests they don't make any difference whatsoever.

Which makes sense to me.

Why would the virus care if you're a Dem or a Republican?

And why would the virus care if you wear a mask or not? You're still breathing the same air!

Anyway, Big Doug is gonna push whatever small businesses are still afloat under the water again. 

When the story starts with "suspected Russian hackers" you know you're reading bullsh!t

I clicked on a CBC headline that told me Russian hackers had infiltrated the email system at the US Department of Homeland Security.

The first word in the story is "suspected."

Oh. So they don't actually know this to be true. But they're floating this story anyway, because, Putin.

You know, Putin's aggression and all that. Look how he persecutes those punk rock icons, Pussy Riot. Look at how he persecutes freedom and corruption fighters Bill Browder and Alexei Navalny. Look at how he grabbed that Crimean naval base right out from under the noses of the Americans.

Clearly, Putin must be stopped.

Therefore, even if we have absolutely nothing to definitively connect Russia to the SolarWinds hack, here's a bit of official speculation to get you headed in the right direction.

Perhaps by next week Bellingcat will have come up with the proof!

China: goofy, klutzy, clumsy, dumb, and dumber

Those are a few of the descriptors Globe and Mail journo Campbell Clark tosses into today's two minutes of China hate. 

Those silly fools! They are the "Keystone Kops of propaganda," don't you know! Look how we rattled them with our sanctions! They sanctioned a few Canadians right back, and now the whole world is rallying to Canada's side, or if not the whole world, at least Joe and Boris. Har-de-har har, those dumbass Chinese!

Having surrendered our sovereignty for the sake of America's illegal and immoral sanctions on Iran by nabbing Meng Wanzhou, we plucky Canucks now look to Boris and Joe to bail us out. I'm sure freedom for the two Michaels is so close they can almost taste it...

Do the people publishing this nonsense really believe that the daily trashing of China in the pages of the Globe and Mail is in any way conducive to improving relations between our countries?

Just hold 'em down and give those brown folks the jab!

The Toronto Star has presented many articles spelling out the sordid facts around our front line heroes on the frontmost of front lines, the PSWs in long term care homes. Thanks to the diligent reportage by Star journalists, we know those workers are mostly racialized recent immigrants working multiple part-time jobs to make ends meet.

These are the folks who are gonna be wiping your ass and washing your balls when you can't take care of yourself anymore. They typically make a wage that leaves them well below the poverty line. We should be very very kind to them.

We also know that vaccine hesitation is more pronounced in communities of colour, and the Toronto Star has provided us with extensive coverage of this topic. BIPOC communities have long suffered from systemic racism, and therefore don't trust the health care system.

Today, the Toronto Star published this letter, titled by an editor, or an unpaid intern standing in for an editor, "Care workers refusing vaccine should be unemployed."

Shouldn't my expectation to be cared for by a fully vaccinated health team supersede their baseless fear of vaccination? I believe their choice of whether to vaccinate or not ought to be replaced with the choice of whether to keep their jobs or not.

The author's name would suggest they are not a recent immigrant, and I strongly suspect they've not worked anywhere near the front lines.

There's quite a few strands you could pull together in analysing why the Star would publish a letter that suggests we fire racialized recent immigrants in essential health-care positions because they are vaccine hesitant.

I don't want to stir up a conspiracy theory, but do you think this could be a first glimpse of the new owners of the Toronto Star flexing their muscles?

Researchers discover negative bias in pandemic reporting

Who knew?

I've been commenting on the over-the-top fear-mongering of pandemic reportage for over a year now. It is ubiquitous, relentless, and continues to this day. Check out the home page of CBC News anytime you like, and most of what you'll read is alarming speculation about what some experts think might yet be unleashed by variants, variants of concern, mutations, double mutations, and so forth. The fact that there are other experts thinking other thoughts is never hinted at.

Here is but one very minor example of media malfeasance. Every news platform in the land features the daily case count front and centre. Do any of those platforms tell you the daily test counts? No!

Why not? The government publishes this number every day, on the same government website that gives us the case numbers. Why does the media give us one of those stats with religious zeal, while totally ignoring the other one? Isn't it perfectly reasonable to expect that you'll find twice as much covid if you do twice as much testing?

Ontario first hit 35,000 tests per day early last September. By January we were averaging over 70,000 per day. During that period we saw new cases go from about 1000 per day to over 3000 per day. That was the dreaded "second wave."

Yes, Ontario had a second wave, but at least half the increase was due to nothing other than doubling the number of daily tests. Cut the second wave in half and it looks more like a ripple than a wave. But that's certainly not something the media pointed out, is it?

So yes, there's been an obvious fear-mongering spin to covid coverage overall, but it can't be real until some experts figure it out.

Here it is. Researchers at a couple of serious schools (ie not Fairfax University!) took a look at some 20,000 pandemic related news stories, and found over 90% had a negative spin. Even last summer, as case numbers were declining, negative stories were five times more frequent than positive ones. 

Unfortunately for legions of conspiracy theorists, this skewing of the pandemic narrative is not the result of secret machinations behind the curtain. It's driven by reader demand. People click on negative stories more often, and therefore the click-driven media platforms give the readers more of what they want.

Trump v Biden; Who's the empty suit?

No matter how much you may have been a Trump fan, by the end of his four year run in the White House it was beyond obvious that the "president" didn't actually wield any supposed presidential powers. As entertaining as the man was, and he was certainly a ratings bonanza for corporate news, he was essentially an empty suit. Actual power was exercised by others.

No matter how much you may have been a Joe Biden fan, and he allegedly has more fans than any president in history, after watching his first presser, a mere 65 days into his tenure, it is impossible to imagine that this man is calling the shots in Washington. Joe is just an empty suit.

Which raises an interesting question that cuts to the core of America's claim to be the leader of the free and democratic world. If the president elected by the people, in the most expensive and ostentatious display of "democratic process" seen anywhere on earth, doesn't actually exercise power, isn't the entire spectacle a sham?

Does that fact not call into question the very foundation of America's civilizing mission to the world, the relentless and ruthless export of a dystopian governance model that long ago ceased to be a functioning democracy?

The super-awesome & miraculous intelligence scoops from Bellingcat

In the summer of 2014, things were pretty hot in the eastern reaches of Ukraine. The democratically elected Yanukovych government had been overthrown in a US engineered coup. Russia had subsequently absorbed Crimea, and there were fears of a wider conflict. This was the context of the shooting down of MH 17, a civilian Malaysian airliner.

The Americans realized they had a potential propaganda bonanza on their hands, if only they had something they could pass off as proof to pin the blame on the Russians. Alas, in spite of an army of thousands of analysts and data scientists, in spite of an array of spy satellites monitoring every square inch of Ukraine 24/7 in real time, in spite of vast networks of on-the-ground informants, and in spite of a budget in the many billions of dollars, they had nothing.

Enter Eliot Higgins, a thirty-something unemployed loafer in England. Eliot was able to prove what the US intelligence apparatus couldn't. Sure enough, the Ruskies had sneaked one of their missile systems across the border, shot down MH 17, and then skedaddled back over to Russia!

Hmm...

The nature of Higgins' "proofs" tends to leave more than a little bit desired, like any actual solid proof in the conventional sense of the word. Nevertheless, that was good enough to get him on the grant list at the National Endowment for Democracy, that US government-funded "non-government organization" specializing in distributing seed money to whatever fifth columns might further US interests in target nations.

Eliot was a guest on The Current this morning. Needless to say, host Matt Galloway didn't ask any  awkward questions about that US financing, or about anything else for that matter. Instead, we were treated to what was essentially twenty minutes of anti-Russian propaganda by a guy who collects money from the American government.

The CBC; using Canadian tax dollars to spread US propaganda.

Why do so many think tanks think the same thoughts?

Here's a fun activity if you're "working" from home and want to kill some time. Whenever you're reading about geopolitics on the CBC or in the Globe and Mail, and you get to the part where they trot out a couple of experts to flesh out their story, do a little homework and find out what organizations those experts are affiliated with, and where they get their funding.

The old saw about the guy who pays the piper may not be fashionable, but still rings true.

For example, virtually any article you'll read on those platforms will cite experts from one or another think tank, the vast majority of which are sponsored by various Western governments, foundations, billionaires, Pentagon contractors, or some combination of the above. 

When the expert being cited is a former defence minister now acting as a lobbyist for weapons manufacturers, it's good to know that. It probably has an impact on how he arranges his priorities. Anything affiliated with defence spending obviously needs some scary enemies out there to justify more defence spending!

Truly independent authorities on whatever is the topic at hand don't come up very often in our free press.

That's because they're in the propaganda business now, not the news business.

Here come da third wave... just in time for record Pharma profits!

Yup, the long anticipated third wave of the pandemic is upon us, and here's why.

Vaccinations. As countries roll out mass vaccinations, covid cases and deaths go up! It's true! The UK and Israel were early birds to the vaccination sweepstakes. Both countries saw massive spikes in both cases and deaths after they began mass vaccinations. In both countries, the onset of vaccinations triggered the third wave, which began to recede after 6-8 weeks.

Here's the UK data. They started vaccinating the second week of December.

Israel began vaccinating the third week of December.

It's therefore reasonable to expect that as our vaccine roll-out progresses, we too will see a spike in cases and deaths.

And by the way, that jab doesn't prevent you getting the disease, nor does it prevent you from spreading it. So what's the point? Check out this story from CNN; Pfizer and Moderna could score 32 billion in vaccine sales.

Do your patriotic duty and get your shot!

Poop City

That's what you get when the snow melts and you realize just how many shits your dog took over the winter.

We had a great weekend up here in the Great White North, notwithstanding the passing of a beloved aunt. She was so ready to go home to Jesus that it's difficult to be anything but happy for her.

Kicked the weekend off Friday night with wings and beer at this joint.

Yup, right there at the Wiarton International Airport! Those folks used to have a food truck, and now they've got a sit-down joint at the airport. That's how Bitove started, if I remember correctly.

They ran a pretty sharp operation. I remember one time I had missed a flight, and ended up killing a few hours at the Bitove-run bar at Pearson, waiting for the next one. And it wasn't that I wanted to stiff them on my tab, but the barkeep was way busy and my flight was finally leaving again, so, what the hell...

I was well past all the checkpoints and almost to my seat when Buddy from the bar taps me on the shoulder and waves the bill in my face. That's how you run a business!

Anyway, it was wing night, and we went for the fire and ice recipe. Most agreeable! For forty bucks with a couple of drinks and a decent tip, me and Bruno were able to have wings 'n fries for lunch again on Saturday.

Not sure what the long-term prospects are for the Wiarton-Keppel International Airport. Wiarton is the town, Keppel is the township. They're both broke, or close enough to it that they can't keep subsidising an "international" airport.

That should be the responsibility of the federal government, but they don't seem to have much interest. Perhaps we should be marketing the airport as a forward base for USAF missiles defending us from Russian and China.

That would at least attract some fed funding!

RIP Tante Hilde

When our clan washed ashore here in the middle fifties, Tante Hilde was one of the aunties who looked out for you like you were their own.

This continued well beyond our formative years. I'll never forget that time when she got me out of a jam that was gonna get me in big trouble with my mom.

Back in the day, the Hirtles lived up in the northeast corner of Guelph. Not too far away, there was massive gravel extraction going on to build Guelph Lake. Those gravel pits became a magnet for youthful partying.

I'd borrowed my mom's car to attend to an evening of revelry out there. If I'm not mistaken, I believe the car was a Plymouth Scamp. White with a burgundy vinyl roof. I must have had a great time, because when I awoke, the party was over. I was the only one there.

And my mom's car wouldn't start.

So, making the best of a bad situation, I figured I'd hike to Johnny Hirtle's place to round up a posse to come and rescue the car. Walking there along the roads would have been miles and hours. But if I cut across Lou Fontinato's farm, I'd be there in maybe twenty minutes.

Fontinato was the NHL player whose neck and career were broken by Gordie Howe, but he was well regarded locally. He wouldn't have a problem with me cutting across his farm.

But the problem I had cutting across his farm was falling through the ice in that marsh in front of his place. Pretty sure I crapped myself before I realized my feet had touched bottom and my head was still above water.

That took the immediate urgency out of the situation, but I still had to get up Victoria Road to Johnny's place, and avoid his mom, Tante Hilde, at all costs. If my mom got wind of this little hickup, I'd never get the car again, and it was a foregone conclusion that if Tante Hilde knew, my mother would know five minutes later.

So I arrive up at the house half frozen, and I desperately need some dry clothes, not to mention the posse to retrieve my mom's car. I'm also desperate to avoid my aunt. It's two in the morning by now. I tap on Johnny's window. Nothing.

I peek in the front window. The side window. Oh my God, what am I going to do....

Suddenly the door opens, and I hear, "Dee-tah, vat ah you doing?"

Oh shit! 

Busted!

To make a longish story short, Johnny arrived home a short while later, and we got my mom's car home safe and sound, but in the meantime, my Tante Hilde had fixed me up with dry clothes.

To this day, I can't imagine that this little incident was never shared between my aunt and my mother, but the thing of it is, my dear mom never mentioned a word about it, and my car privileges were unscathed.

It paid to have Tante Hilde in your corner!

*******

A special thanks to Reg and Carson who ensured Tante Hilde didn't spend her last year isolated.

StatsCan reports lockdowns kill more than Covid; media silent

Have a good close read of what this government of Canada website is telling you.

Then read it again.

Kinda undermines those panic headlines you've been seeing all over the place, doesn't it?

In our little corner of the planet, the local health unit reports four times more OD deaths than Covid deaths.

And for this we had to shut the county down and drive a few dozen businesses out of business?

People aren't desperate because they fear the virus.

People are desperate because we shut their job down and they don't know if they can feed their children next month.

Anyway, read that government report.

Mark my words; this will be PM Fluffy's Next Big Scandal

I personally thought John McCallum made a splendidly adequate ambassador to China. That's a level of  competence vanishingly rare in the modern era of Canadian diplomacy.

Unfortunately for John, after we nabbed Meng Wanzhou he went off script in some public remarks made in China, to the effect that this unfortunate error would soon be corrected, and that was the end of his diplomatic career.

After an exhaustive search, and I am sure thoroughly vetting many potential candidates, Fluffy's leadership team (Chrystia) settled on Dominic Barton as our new ambassador.

The very first sentence of Barton's Wikipedia entry tells us that he is known as Bao Damin in China. Shows you how much the steady stream of anti-China propaganda has poisoned the atmosphere in the year and a half since Barton was appointed to the job. That fact alone would disqualify him today.

More problematic is the work he did for the Chinese Communist Party while he was the top gun at McKinsey and Co. A few years ago that would have been a bonus. He knows his way around the place. But after getting our two minutes of China hate every day on the CBC, the public is far more likely to see this as a liability.

I'll predict he'll be the second ambassador to be sacrificed on the altar of that holy US extradition request!

But things are looking up! Papa Joe is gonna look after China for us now...

And Papa Trudeau is puking in his grave.

Was Hunter's laptop Russian disinformation?

I commented the other day on the lack of specifics in the latest missive from the US "intelligence community" claiming that Russia had interfered in the 2020 election.

The CBC wasn't the only network treating this as some sort of factual statement. In fact, a number of top-shelf "journalists" embarrassed themselves with all manner of extravagant claims about the Spookworld press release, up to and including that we now have proof that Hunter's laptop was a Russian disinfo op!

You'll remember that laptop. Drugs, hookers, and partnership agreements re how the Biden clan can divvy up the spoils from their global pay-to-play shake-down. On the face of it, the material on the laptop was so egregiously incriminating you'd almost think it must be a plant. What kind of a addle-brained cretin would leave such a mess behind?

Hmm... perhaps an addict who is no longer thinking clearly?

The New York Post, which broke the story, found itself locked out of its Twitter and Facebook accounts, and the story was effectively suppressed until after the election. Given how tight the election was, it's impossible to say what difference the free circulation of the story might have made.

Anyway, the corporate mainstream and social media successfully disappeared the story, and immediately jumped on the intelligence report the other day as vindication.

Hilarity ensues. Glenn Greenwald has the details.

Oddly enough, Greenwald is exactly the kind of truth-speaker that mainstream media want to silence, in the interest of protecting us from disinformation.

It's time to call out Irish Supremacy

As has been abundantly proven recently, all that ails society can be traced back to white supremacy.

I'll let you in on another secret. At the core of white supremacy lies Irish Supremacy.

Think about it. What other white ethnic group is afforded its own ethnic pride day? I was discussing this with the Farm Manager earlier today. She is distraught that there is no Jewish equivalent of St. Patrick's Day. How can society condone a celebration of Irish identity, but ignore the Jews?

Anti-Semitism, anyone?

And why is there no celebration of German identity? Oh, you think that piss-up in October is good enough?

I think not!

No doubt the Italian, Greek, Ukrainian and sundry other ethnicities will soon be demanding their own national pride days too.

Pushing back against Irish privilege is the first step in the long march to toppling systemic racism.

CBC recycles US propaganda, calls it news

Here is just one sentence from today's CBC by way of Reuters scoop on Putin's hanky-panky in the 2020 US election.

"Biden, a Democrat, defeated Trump, a Republican, and became president on January 20."

Thanks for that. I'm not in grade two, but thanks for that.

So we get the usual evidence-free speculation from America's vaunted "intelligence community," and I know you'll be totally gobsmacked to learn that PUTIN DID IT AGAIN!!!

Yup, Bad Vlad done diddled US democracy again, dammit!

It's time to yank that authoritarian dictators leash! Put him in his place! Give the Russian people the freedom and human rights they yearn for!

You know, the usual bullshit. And of course, the Towelheads 'o Terror, aka the ayatollahs, were busy making mischief as well. 

But this is what's actually newsworthy about the report; although apparently nobody at Thomson-Reuters or CBC picked up on it, the Deep State PR Department just signalled they're willing to cut China some slack.

 Conspiracy connoisseurs will immediately tie that tidbit in to those baseless rumours that the Biden Family is looking to not only protect their interests there, but to grow and consolidate them. That's just disinformation, designed to draw the eye away from what's really going on.

The China-Iran-Russia Axis of Fuck-you Uncle Sam is getting a little worrisome for the DC crowd. This non-story is part of an orchestrated campaign to disrupt that alliance. The reason we need to peel China away from the rest of the triumvirate is because China is where a whole lot of American billionaires have parked their investment dollars.

 

We'll make it to the Promised Land any day now

Looks like Sleepy Joe got his 1.9 trillion bailout package through. About half the .9 is for the little people. The rest is for the fat cats. The party donors, in other words.

The national debt is up to who-knows-what, but in these perilous times our leaders feel empowered to keep piling more on, the morons. There is no plan re: how these debts will ever be paid.

But let's not lose sight of the big picture! We're whuppin' that virus, so we are! Big Pharma is pumping out hundreds of millions of doses for hundreds of billions of dollars. Odds are, COVID 19 will turn out to be one of those gifts that keep on giving. The scientists are this very moment discovering that to truly keep the virus down, we will need a booster shot once or twice a year!

So you probably won't go too far wrong if you invest your bailout cheque in Big Pharma stocks.

It's also been discovered by a research team led by famed economist Greta Thunberg that less economic activity means less pollution. Therefore, in order to save the planet, when we build back better, we will have to do so with less economic activity. I know that sounds impossible, but this is where blockchain and crypto come in.

Bitcoin is way too complicated for most folks, me included, to understand. That's why we have to put our faith in the experts, the really smart people who get how it works. And they promise it's gonna be a really great thing. It'll allow governments to tackle corruption, because every transaction is archived in those special egalitarian data cloud-banks.

Bitcoin will also come in handy to pay off that scary national debt. As long as we build enough bitcoin-mining computer networks, we'll be able to pay everything off with bitcoin, and nobody will ever have to work again!

But to unleash its full potential, we have to get going on our 5G networks. We must get over our 5G hesitancy. People are still fretting about brain cancer. Cancer shmancer; that's been studied to death already. Time to stop studying and double down on getting those 5G networks up and running!

Besides, it'll allow AI robots to do remote brain cancer surgery, plus give you faster download speeds! 

What's not to like?

Since the great Julian Assange treason scandal of 2010, mainstream media has been remade to more reliably reflect the views of experts who decide what's good for us. Those titles who collaborated with Wikileaks, like the New York Times and The Guardian, have been brought to heel. News is now more consistent, at least if you keep away from the so-called "alt-news" sites, but there's good news on that front as well. Between 5G and AI, those alt-news sites will be a thing of the past in the near future.

So overall, things are looking up! Paradise is just around the corner!

Enjoy The Jimmy Dore show while you can

I'd never heard of Jimmy Dore before lockdown. All that extra screen time led me to discover a show I quite enjoy.

Dore's politics are old-school left, and he has a righteous hatred on for the Democratic Party. He's interviewed Matt Tiabi, Glenn Greenwald, and Chris Hedges, guys who have something worthwhile to say, but have been kicked off corporate media platforms.

Dore likes to boast that he's cancel proof. No boss, no manager, no agent, no contract... nobody can fire me, ha ha ha!... well I guess Google could kick me off YouTube.

Indeed they could, Jimmy! Nobody calls Rachel Maddow a liar and gets away with it for long.

Cultural appropriation at its finest

Cultural appropriation is a hot-button deal in the upper reaches of the Western world. You might have killed off the Indians and enslaved the Blacks, but god forbid you should appropriate their culture...

Alrighty then. We'll wink at the genocide but don't you dare do any of that racist cultural appropriation.

You know.... like Bettye LaVette ripping off Bob Dylan! 

Enjoy!

Just like a young girl should? When will the PC Police bust the Rolling Stones?

In my estimation, never.

Check out this video of a Stones show from 2015. Then, look up the lyrics to Brown Sugar. Then, watch the video again. There's more black folks in the band than in the audience.

Maybe that's because lyrics about a slaver whipping a black girl isn't something they need to hear.

So what's up with those black musicians sharing the stage? Are they a bunch of Uncle Toms? They'll tell you they love touring with the world's most famous rock and roll band and are handsomely compensated for their troubles, but that's probably just false consciousness talking.

There's a reason the PC cops haven't got to the Rolling Stones yet. They've become too big to fell. Knighthoods and hundreds of millions of dollars have made them cultural icons immune to PC opprobrium, at least for now.

But that could change. If Harry and the Missus succeed in convincing their adoring base that they are victims of Royal Family Racism, well, a knighthood's gonna be more of a liability than an honour.

I know a retired math teacher who's been to eight live shows, and health permitting, he'll go to the next one too when they tour again. He, and not the street-fighting men, are the Rolling Stones' base now.

Canada wants to overthrow socialist Maduro, but sends money to fascist Duque

There's a nifty half-pager on A11 of today's Globe and Mail, all about how kindly Canada is sending $30 millions to kindly Colombia to help the millions of refugees fleeing the regime of the evil dictator next door. Writer Natalie Alcoba manages to avoid any mention of America's all-out campaign to destroy the economy of Venezuela, by far the most significant driver of the situation in that country today.

Canada has been a willing junior partner in that manifestly illegal and immoral mission, imposing our own sanctions three years ago, around the time Chrystia Freeland "took charge" of the Lima Group, a smelly concoction brewed up in Washington, as everyone was well aware. We still officially recognize the hand-picked US stooge Juan Gauido as the legitimate president of Venezuela, which is a truly bold stretch of the very concept of democracy.

Alcoba mentions in passing that over 400 human rights defenders have been murdered in Colombia since 2016. That would be folks like union organizers and human rights workers; you know, the usual troublemakers. They seem to die more often in Colombia than anywhere in the world! Too bad she had to leave out the fact that these murders are carried out by right-wing death squads linked to the government.

Probably a good thing. You wouldn't want the public to ask why we'd be sending money to a country that facilitates death squads, while simultaneously sanctioning a country that had a better record of bringing masses of people out of poverty than any other in Latin American. 

Front-line workers report fascism working out great!

The Farm Manager still has her day job in town, to which I commute her back and forth. Which is a kinda funny thing from the point of view of someone who just retired. 

When you went to those retirement seminars that were designed to get the old farts out of the way, they always told you how much money you'd save because you didn't have to drive back and forth to work anymore.

In my world, commuting costs didn't disappear; they doubled!

But I digress. The FM reports that the situation on the ground under COVID RULES has resulted in a much more agreeable work environment. 

The kids are far more amenable to following rules than they were a year ago.

As a teacher, I must hang my head in shame.

Grievance porn

I love it when persons with incomprehensible levels of privilege show up on TV whinging about how they are victims of the media. 

And not only that, these uber-priveleged uber-twats were also the victims of systemic racism!

Looks to me like Harry and his bride may have ditched the royal family, but they're gunning to be the King and Queen of the Kingdom of Perpetual Grievance.

Maybe there'll be a Netflix series in the works soon. 

Let's not forget the anti-fascist Christians

While it is an embarrassment to Christianity that far-right Christian fundamentalist war-mongers like Pence and Pompeo have claimed the brand as their own, let's not forget that there is an exceedingly rich tradition of Christians working to end oppression and promote peace and social justice.

Christian congregations were deeply involved in the anti-slavery movement in Great Britain in the 19th century and the American civil rights movement of the 20th. John Lewis, MLK, CT Vivian, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and William Barber were ordained ministers every one, as was Desmond Tutu, the anti-apartheid campaigner.

Various church groups have played leading roles in the fight to ban nuclear and chemical weapons. Liberation theology played a major role in pushing back against the US-aligned fascist dictators of Latin America. "Dissenting clergy" in nazi-occupied Europe were sent to the death camps.

Not all Christians are fascists, and not all fascists are Christians. 

We need to remember the long history of social justice initiatives promoted by the followers of the Prince of Peace over the centuries.

Who are the "Christian Fascists?"

I like Chris Hedges' work, generally speaking. I find his world-view agreeable. But there's been a few times when he goes on rants about how Christian fascists are on the cusp of seizing power, when I think he's getting a little ahead of himself.

Then again, maybe not.

Check out this profile of Mike Pompeo from the Washington Post. That's from when he was being vetted for the Sec of State job. The future Secretary of State told his interrogators flat out he believes "Jesus Christ our saviour is the only solution for our world."

They approved him for the job.

I'm reminded of this by the sudden rise of fundamentalist Christian Adrian Zenz into the ranks of elite China experts in Western media. This is a born-again Christian who told the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago that God had sent him on a mission to fight communism.

How ironic that 150 years ago the born-againers were working hand-in-glove with the Imperial powers to force Christianity and opium on China at the same time. They called it the "China Inland Mission." Look it up. It's not a happy story.

Today the same bunch of Christian fanatics want to save the Chinese people from communism. The drug they'd like to get them hooked on is Western-style "freedom and human rights."

You know, like those folks in tents all over America enjoy!

Anyway, if Chris's Christian fascists are real, it's kinda scary that their narrative is becoming the mainstream narrative.

The reason Christian Soldiers march boldly into war is because they have convinced themselves God is on their side...

We in a heap 'o doo-doo!

Communism has killed over 527,000 Americans in the past year

That's according to the crackpot logic of the Victims of Communism Foundation. If the number looks familiar, it's because that's also the USA covid death count. You see, for the hardcore commie fighters at VOC, all 2.61 million covid deaths world-wide are in fact victims of communism!

Because the virus originated in communist China, of course!

The Victim's of Communism Foundation is another of those dubious "non-government organizations" created by the US government. Check out their vision statement.

VISION

A WORLD FREE FROM THE FALSE HOPE OF COMMUNISM.

Inspired by an appreciation for the principles of liberty and an understanding of how these ideas have enabled human flourishing and prosperity to an unprecedented degree, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation envisions a world free from the false hope of Marxism and safe from the tyranny of communism.

The real examples of socialism today are China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, and now Venezuela. We must contend with these regimes and the threats they pose to free people—and we must struggle for the freedom of the more than one billion people held captive by these regimes.

Got it? There's a billion people held hostage in China and other commie nations, and it's up to us to struggle for their freedom! 

This would be just another run-of-the-mill US propaganda operation were it not for the fact that these jokers are now being trotted out as "China experts" as the Yellow Peril anti-China warmongering reaches fever pitch. Their "senior fellow" on China, Adrian Zenz, formerly of the comically sinophobic Epoch Times, is now quoted almost every other day in the pages of the Globe and Mail.

The purpose of the propaganda onslaught is obvious enough. As China rises and America decays, the window of opportunity for doubling down on "full spectrum dominance" is closing fast. 

We're being groomed for war on China.

New Amsterdam and the idiocy of for-profit health care

Back when the public health care debate was raging in Canada, the Canadian Medical Association was originally against the idea. It was the Cold War era, and universal health care paid for by the government (in other words, out of your taxes) sounded like a commie plot to a lot of folks.

Yet, Tommy Douglas got 'er done, and Canadians have been living happily with socialized medical care ever since. It's not perfect. There's tons of things we could do to improve it. Yet it works. Nobody goes bankrupt in Canada because of their hospital bills. That's the number one cause of bankruptcies in that bastion of for-profit health care south of us.

Although there's a decent flat-screen in the room, me and the Farm Manager tend to watch different stuff. I'm pretty big on Jay Leno's Garage and old Rodney Dangerfield vids. The FM is more into streaming stuff. Recently she's been binge-watching New Amsterdam, the NBC series about a hospital in New York. 

We're on our laptops ten feet apart, so I can sorta follow what's going on in her show. There's always some brave renegade doctors trying to find a way to wangle an essential procedure through the system on behalf of a patient who needs it but can't afford it. 

The fact that it requires a rebel, a renegade, or a rulebreaker willing to game the system just to deliver health care to people who need it, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about for-profit health care.

Check out this list of who spent what lobbying the US government last year. The for-profit healthcare sector easily surpasses $100 millions in lobbying expenses. That tsunami of cash eventually shuts up every "progressive" who ever made a noise about single-payer, from Hillary to the Squaddies.

Tommy D. was voted best-loved Canadian in a CBC poll a few years ago. Not only did he bring Canada universal health care, he gifted Hollywood Shirley Douglas and Kiefer Sutherland.

Now that's a legacy!

February squish factor

Every month I tally up how many views my fresh posts garnered at Blogger compared to Before It's News.

In theory, since I publish on Blogger, the biggest blog host on the web, the looks there should by far outstrip the views at Before It's News, where I'm stashed in the fringe back corner on what's already a fringe website.

However, Google loads up its Blogger platform with a gauntlet of all sorts of algorithms designed to protect the public by squishing misinformation, disinformation, Putin's propaganda, Chinese propaganda, Iranian propaganda... in fact, any propaganda whatsoever unless it's US propaganda, and any other ideas that do not pass the the current groupthink sniff test.

In February I posted 34 stories on Blogger. Before It's News reposted 33 of them.

Views on Blogger; avg of 16.5 views per post for a total of 560.

Views on Before It's News; avg of 77 per post for a total of 2,554.

Algorithms at work!

 

The Beautiful People

I had no idea the official video for that tune has over 200 million views.

Holy shit... I've been sharing my insights into the state of the universe for almost ten years, and I'm not quite at half a million looks yet. This clown has 200 million looks on one single video?

Brian Warner is in a bit of hot water these days. Seems the "tortured artist" card isn't a get out of jail free card anymore. Unless you're the Rolling Stones. And nothing has tortured them for decades.

Be that as it may, Warner's shtick proved a cultural bellwether. Michael Moore turned him into a serious person with that spot on Bowling for Columbine.

He is obviously an intelligent dude. 

I think guys like Brian deserve their get out of jail free cards. After all, they provide an essential service to the ruling elite. They channel the potentially disruptive energy of disaffected youth into the bank accounts of music industry executives. 

Hey, I can think of worse outcomes...

Why we must humiliate China

In China, the government provides homes, health care, and jobs, but not much in the way of US-style "freedom and democracy." In America, it's the other way around. 

In America, if your job was sent to China and your house has been foreclosed, at least you've still got freedom and democracy. Freedom to pitch a tent on the sidewalk, and a democracy which, according to its apologists, is the envy of the world.

When America celebrated the "end of history" some thirty years ago, a tsunami of hubris and triumphalism overwhelmed the ruling class. Capitalism had prevailed! The free world, led by the USA, was now unchecked in sharing its freedom and democracy world-wide!

And we did. We brought freedom and democracy to Kosovo, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, and to Syria, earning the enmity of hundreds of millions who remain convinced their lives were better before we bestowed our gifts upon them.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party, having missed the memo on the end of history, quietly doubled down on the treacherous communist policy of putting the needs of their people first. Instead of squandering hundreds of billions on foreign wars, they invested in infrastructure, education, and health care. 

As China prospered, lifting hundreds of millions of her citizens out of poverty, America was going in the opposite direction, plunging tens of millions of Americans into poverty. Infrastructure was neglected. Public education was deliberately starved of funding. Universal health care remains impossible in the world's richest economy. America's many wars of choice forced millions of refugees from their bombed out shit-hole countries into Europe, there to return the favour by turning our NATO allies into shit-hole countries.

And here we are today. The club of true believers in American Exceptionalism shrinks daily. World-wide, anyone with eyes to see and a brain to process it would be hard-pressed to choose the US model as the one to emulate. China, on the other hand, looks better all the time!

That, my friends, is why it is essential for freedom-loving nations to humiliate China. If they're allowed to get away with providing housing, health care, and education to everyone who wants it, pretty soon other countries will be tempted to follow their path, thereby denying even more people freedom and democracy.

Enough is enough!

Freedom and democracy for Hong Kong!

Freedom and democracy for Taiwan!

FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY FOR EAST TURKESTAN NOW!!!

When Mick looked like Oprah...

I'm aimlessly doing what pot-addled hillbillies do on Saturday night, cruising the internet.

And I must say, I am utterly gobsmacked and totally discombobulated to discover this YouTube vid wherein Mick looks just like Oprah.

How do you even begin to explain such a coincidence?

Where oh where did my Bitcoin go?

I'll fess up right off the top; I don't get crypto.

I had a colleague in the math department who tried to explain it to me. Apparently he was into it at the very beginning. He liquidated his Bitcoin position at fifteen cents. Now it's over fifty thousand bucks.

But he was never able to explain to me what crypto actually is.

Here's what I know for sure. Crypto lives in the clouds. When you trade real actual cash for Bitcoin, you're putting your faith in those clouds, owned and operated by the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

If you trust Bill and Jeff to look out for your interests, well, caveat emptor, as the Italians used to say.

But quite aside from that, the nation state that provides safe haven for these pirates is also buffing up its nuclear arsenal for the coming show-down with those who would defy its authority. The tsunami of electromagnetic radiation that will ensue when the first nuclear warheads explode is guaranteed to wipe out all digital infrastructure everywhere. 

Including the cloud you put your life's savings in.

Which is why you should buy gold. A thousands year record as a storehouse of value trumps all those cryptoscams you've been reading about lately. And a gold bar is guaranteed to survive an electromagnetic radiation event.

Anti-Putin fabulists at Globe and Mail still shilling for Navalny

The Globe's Senior Internet Correspondent Mark MacKinnon has a news flash for us; Alexei Navalny is now Putin's "No.1 political threat - and a symbol of hope for many in the country."

I guess the good news is the narrative managers have quietly deposed Bullshittin' Bill Browder from that role, and not a moment too soon! The main problem with Browder's shtick is that, aside from being risibly self-serving, it failed to get any traction whatsoever inside Russia.

MacKinnon's fluff piece paints a glowing picture of Navalny's rise to imaginary influence. "Comparison's have been made between Mr. Navalny and Nelson Mandela..." 

Really? The only people making such an asinine comparison are the aficionados of Washington's ceaseless regime change machinations. A more apt comparison would be to Juan Guaido, the US-sponsored stooge being passed off by the Americans and a handful of lackey states as the "legitimate" leader of Venezuela.  

As a professional journo who does his homework, MacKinnon must have seen this story at Reuters. It discusses the latest Levada Center polling on trust in Russian political figures. Putin doesn't have much to worry about, at least from Navalny, who rings in at No. 6 on the list of leaders Russians trust the most. 

Sure, the polls may call Navalny No. 6, but once you apply the secret Globe and Mail anti-Putin math formula, he mysteriously becomes No. 1. That's because their mission here is not to inform us of what's actually going on in Russian politics, but to reinforce the anti-Putin narrative that corporate media have been cultivating for the past twenty years.

Someday the curtain will come down on Putin's political career, but it's not likely the Russian people will ever choose a leader whose puppet strings are as obvious as Alexei Navalny's.

Everybody loves Bruno

We're into our third month of hosting Bruno. It's working out. He's mostly a good boy. Everybody loves him.

Just today, a woman pushing a shopping cart across the Foodland parking lot hollered at me, 100 yards away, "beautiful dog!"

Not being one to shout across parking lots, I replied with a thumbs up.

Everywhere you stop with the car and roll down his window, random passersby go gaga over him. Oh he's gorgeous, oh what a beauty, oh blah blah beautiful blah...

Mostly it's women. If the Farm Manager ever sets out in search of greener pastures I sure hope she leaves Bruno with me!

It's not just women, though. There's a guy up the road with an English mastiff. Bit of a pothead (the dude, not the dog) and not much of a dog owner - one time I was hiking by the place and his dog ran out and grabbed one of my walking sticks. We don't really interact that much. Anyway, he drives by real slow, does a u-turn in the middle of the road, and stops to chit-chat about Bruno.

Mind you, there are a couple of gals over Port Elgin way who don't love him that much. Me and Bruno were out and about a few days ago, and I stopped at Macgregor Park to give him a chance to stretch his legs and do his business. It was early morning and we had a lovely twenty minute walk out to Pump-house Point, him mostly off leash the whole way.

We were heading back to the car when I heard folks approaching. I'd no sooner got the leash on him than they come around the corner, two women and a dog. I offer a cheery good morning... and all hell breaks loose!

The other dog instantly drops to the ground. 

Bruno instantly lunges at it, dragging me along. He's going for the dog. I'm going for him. I've got both hands on his neck and pull him off as the gals are hootin' and hollerin' and making one hell of a fuss.

I end up flat on my back in the snow. Bruno, now gone completely inert, because he knows he's been a very bad boy, is sprawled across me. One of the gals keeps apologizing for kicking my dog. 

Hey lady, totally my bad. Kick the asshole a couple more times if you want. In fact, I insist.

The other one keeps asking if I'm OK, to the point where it's annoying. I'm lying in the snow and I just want to say shut-up already.

I guess from their point of view there's an old man lying in the snow with a dog on top, and I coulda had a heart attack or something. I'm just lying there, trying to process what just happened.

Other than that unfortunate episode, he's mostly a good boy.

The never-ending drip drip drip of Yellow Peril propaganda

At this point, one may wish to ask when "drip drip drip" becomes a gusher. Surely, once we're up to three or four anti-China features per week, we're well on our way.

The latest iteration is served up by Canada's national newspaper of record this morning, under the front-page banner headline, "China Removes Uyghurs To Destroy Culture." Yup, it's the old genocide bugbear again! 

Turns out intrepid China basher Nathan Vanderklippe hasn't actually committed any fresh journalism to produce this expose. Instead, the appearance of this story today is occasioned by a "research paper" released yesterday by Adrian Zenz of the Victims of Communism Foundation. That's another one of those amazing "Non-Government Organizations" created and funded by the US government! Zenz himself is an "Evangelical Christian" who claims to be on a God-given mission to defeat communism. 

The actual "mistreatment" inflicted on the Uyghur minority would seem to be a thing of envy for many persecuted minorities around the world; they are "forced" (i.e. given free transport) to travel to areas of the country experiencing labour shortages, then provided guaranteed jobs, housing, and childcare. When Canadians are forced to up sticks and relocate cross country for better opportunities, they're on their own, as tens of thousands of displaced Maritimers can attest.

No matter! It's China we're talking about, and China's been on Uncle Sam's naughty list ever since Obama announced the "pivot to Asia." For the architects of American Exceptionalism in the beltway, fanning the flames of whatever nascent separatist tendencies exist in Xinjiang looks like a winning formula.

That Canada's premier newspaper so shamelessly parrots made-in-USA anti-China propaganda should give us pause. The long term goal of US strategy is the overthrow of the CCP and the disintegration of the PRC. This cannot and will not happen, and we as Canadians would be well advised to distance ourselves from this latest American obsession before it becomes a bloodbath. 

Globe and Mail exposes Putin's propaganda war on Canada

The Kremlin's disinformation campaign is apparently much more extensive than we hitherto realized. Here are just a few of the falsehoods the Ruskies have been pushing, according to Steven Chase on page A3 of today's paper:

- Chrystia Freeland is a shameless warmonger

- Justin Trudeau doesn't care about the lives of Indigenous children

- Canada is a colony of the US empire

- PM Fluffy is a tool of the wealthy, and not only that, he is also a neoliberal capitalist pawn of the oligarchy.

I'll be the first to admit I've been totally taken in by Putin's propaganda. As a matter of fact, these points of view have, at least until today, struck me as self evident and non-controversial. I might quibble a little with the particulars - for example, I don't believe Justin gives a rat's ass about ANY Indigenous people, children or adults - but the overall thrust, that Canada is a meek and docile handmaiden to US power... well, to have that exposed as a lie is quite a shock!

Then again, the only source for Mr. Chase's scary story are the Champions of American Exceptionalism at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a so-called Canadian think tank that happily solicits and receives funding from the US State Department.

Forget Putin; who's keeping us safe from US propaganda?