Month: May 2021

Authored by Brian Maher via DailyReckoning.com,

“Unethical”… “dystopian”… “totalitarian”…

These are the words of the British government’s primary scientific advisory bunch — the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour, by title.

These scientific advisors presently droop their heads in shame. For these are the very words they employ to describe their own conduct.

They concede: Last March their wicked counsel encouraged government officials to wildly inflate the true viral threat.

Only a pitiless torturing of facts — argued these men and women of science — could terrify the public into locking themselves in, locking themselves up, locking themselves down.

The London Telegraph:

In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear.

Fear came ladling out by the ton.

Millions and millions would perish in agonies scarcely describable, they howled. The hospitals would overflow into the streets, they screeched.

Only the near-cessation of all public life could cage the menace.

The halfway men, the men counseling a measured response… were drummed out of court.

“Using Fear Smacks of Totalitarianism”

Group psychologist Gavin Morgan, confessing his atrocities:

Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government. By nature I am an optimistic person, but all this has given me a more pessimistic view of people.

A pity, it is, that this fellow is not a Daily Reckoning reader.

We would have squeezed the optimism from him long ago… and pumped in an implacable pessimism.

It would have spared him an awful letting-down, a massacre of his innocent delusions.

Here another (unnamed) scientific advisor enters the confession booth:

The way we have used fear is dystopian. The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.

Another member was “stunned by the weaponisation of behavioural psychology.”

Yet another head-shrinker likens his witchcraft to mind control:

“You could call psychology ‘mind control.’ That’s what we do…”

Might we suggest another term for what they do? Might that term be… ‘propaganda?’

Propaganda

Let us consult Mr. Webster and his famous thesaurus. He defines propaganda this way:

Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view… ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause.

We will assume the Telegraph’s reporting in this instance is authentic. If true… has not the British government… purposefully broadcast propaganda?

We are compelled to conclude it has.

And since the United States government let out similar shrieks, can we conclude it too has broadcast propaganda — and for identical reasons?

‘Maybe it did,’ you argue. ‘But the government needed to exaggerate the threat, else too few people would take it seriously. More people would have died. They did what they needed to do.’

That is, you give a wink and nod towards what Plato labeled “the noble lie.”

It may be a lie, you allow. But it is a lie conscripted in the service of a higher good.

Perhaps your argument has juice in it. But is not a noble lie… nonetheless a lie?

And should democratic governments lie to We the People, however nobly?

As well heave the civics books into the hell box.

Noble Lies

The men gathered at Philadelphia in 1787 lacked authorization to draft a Constitution.

Their mandate was to sand down the rougher edges of the Articles of Confederation, to rub on some polish, to give a slight renovation.

They instead dynamited the thing to bits and pieces. The public was denied all knowledge of their mischiefs, denied all voice in the outcome.

It represented — in essence — a coup, a treason against the United States.

Yet it glows in history as the Miracle at Philadelphia. We label the plotters “Founding Fathers.”

And they mounted Olympus rather than the gallows.

The Good Guys Don’t Always Sport White Hats

Mr. Lincoln was no more determined to banish slavery than a bought policeman is determined to banish the narcotics trade.

He would look away from Southern evil so long as he could count his tariffs at the ports of Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans.

What does the noble lie mistell us?

That Old Abe was monomaniacal against the scourge of chattel slavery… and that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.”

Here is another noble lie:

The Kaiser’s soldaten bayoneted Belgian babies during the First World War.

In August 1914, the British scissored the undersea German communications cables running west to American shores.

All trans-Atlantic flows would therefore issue from the British Foreign Office… the same British Foreign Office that sweated mightily to enlist the United States in its cause.

Hence the dreaded Hun’s skewering of poor Belgian infants and similar atrocities.

Come now to Dec. 8, 1941…

Dastardly, Yes. But Unprovoked?

Roosevelt — Franklin Delano — raged against Japan’s dastardly and unprovoked attack the morning prior.

Yet was it entirely unprovoked?

In July 1941, the United States government froze all Japanese assets in its possession.

In August 1941,  the United States government embargoed oil and gasoline exports to Japan.

Over 80% of Japan’s supply shipped in from the United States.

Officials knew well that Japan might take a desperate armed lunge in response.

These men believed war was all but assured. But it was critical that Japan deliver the initial blow… to incense the American public.

United States War Secretary Henry Stimson, on the wrecks of Pearl Harbor:

“My first feeling was of relief … that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.”

Picking Fights With Germans

Prior to Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy had also been initiating jousts against German U-boats along the Atlantic convoy routes.

Was the United States a neutral power prior to December 1941? And did razzing German U-boats constitute a breach of this neutrality?

Many historians will tell you Mr. Roosevelt was attempting to lure the Germans into another Lusitania trap.

But Herr Hitler saw the worm wriggling upon Roosevelt’s hook.

He ordered his men to avoid all tangles with vessels flying the neutral flag of the United States.

He laced into any U-boat man who gobbled the American bait — even in strictest defense.

Not Defending Japan or Germany

Let it go immediately into the record:

We do not throw in with the Japanese Empire… or with the Austrian corporal’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

In our residence, Victory in Europe Day and Victory Over Japan Day are events of high revelry. They are third only to Independence Day and Flag Day.

Once, under the heavy instigation of liquor, we even hung Herr Hitler in effigy — and set his mannequin aflame.

We additionally made a voodoo doll of Tojo… and gave his ghost a frightful jabbing.

We merely wish to illustrate that truth is war’s first battlefield fatality.

The lie may or may not be noble. But a lie it often is.

Examples multiply and multiply.

The Noble Lie of Climate Alarmism

The noble lie lives yet… as the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour demonstrates.

In recent years, the noble lie has also covered the planet itself — climate change.

Alarmists insist we perch perilously upon the devil’s shovel.

If man continues coughing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Earth will catch a raging fever.

Thus the world no longer confronts “climate change.” It confronts a “climate crisis.”

The noble lie writes the warrant for the mass merchandising of alarm. Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method… On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

There, in a walnut shell, you have the noble lie.

Crying Wolf

The noble liars have yelled wolf so often, so loudly, they have cashed in their credibility. Here is the danger:

One day the wolf may truly snarl at the door. An authentic plague or environmental cataclysm may menace us.

But they have already squandered their credit.

They will shout wolf and shout wolf and shout wolf again… telling a noble truth…

Only this time… no one will heed them.

It’s been common knowledge the US-China relationship could be described as one that is in a “Cold War.” The great power competition between the two, as China (the rising power) and the US (the status quo), are engaged in a titanic power struggle. 

The battleground for global supremacy will come down to economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power, which China is quickly gaining on the US. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rapid military modernization effort has beefed up its force with advanced technology, such as fifth-generation fighter jets, drones, and hypersonic weapons. Last October, he said China would never allow its sovereignty, security, and interests to be undermined. 

The latest sign China continues to advance at full speed is the revelation of a new 5000-mile range stealth bomber capable of striking US military assets in the Pacific. 

The latest edition of Chinese Modern Weaponry magazine revealed new computer-generated images of the country’s next-generation Xian H-20 strategic bomber. 

The futuristic stealth bomber was first revealed in 2018 and has a flying wing design similar to the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit built in the late 1990s. The main feature of the H-20 is the intercontinental range and the ability to carry nuclear weapons to strike Guam and other key military bases in the Pacific.  

Modern Weaponry describes the aircraft as “the god of war in the sky.” Though in development for several years, actual images of the bomber have yet to be leaked into the press. 

Jon Grevatt, an Asia-Pacific defense analyst at security intelligence firm Janes, told South China Morning Post that when “the aircraft becomes operational, it has the potential to be a game-changer.” 

“That means that the advantage of that plane is that it could attack like a strategic bomber does, hitting targets at a great distance, perhaps in the second island chain and beyond,” Grevatt said. The second island chain poses a threat to US interests in Asia-Pacific.

If and whenever the H-20 is deployed, it would likely have air-launch hypersonic weapons that would extend the strike range of the aircraft – one that would frighten Washington. China has dubbed one of its hypersonic missiles the “Guam killer.” 

In 2018, China gave everyone a sneak peek of the H-20 at the end of this clip.

While America’s military try’s to decide

The ‘Kitten heel’ or the ‘Stiletto heel’

China’s getting ready to unveil it’s ‘stolen technology’

The Xian H-20 strategic bomber

China- ‘God of war in the sky’

America- We choose the ‘Kitten heel’

👠🇺🇸👠 pic.twitter.com/0WSfms0VNU

— 🇭ip~ (@TruthInBytes) May 25, 2021

This Cold War could be a zero-sum game, and China wants it all. 

Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug placed the same radioactive category as Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for the treatment of COVID-19, has reemerged as a promising treatment in the battle to extinguish the pandemic.

New York Times best-selling author Michael Capuzzo has called it the “drug that cracked Covid,” writing that there are “hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying.”

Doctors in India are big fans.

To that end Dr. Justus R. Hope, MD asks in The Desert Review: Is Ivermectin the new Penicillin?

*  *  *

As those Indian States using Ivermectin continue to diverge in cases and deaths from those states that forbid it, the natural experiment illustrates the power of Ivermectin decisively.

Cases in Delhi, where Ivermectin was begun on April 20, dropped from 28,395 to just 2,260 on May 22. This represents an astounding 92% drop. Likewise, cases in Uttar Pradesh have dropped from 37,944 on April 24 to 5,964 on May 22 – a decline of 84%. 

Delhi and Uttar Pradesh followed the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) guidance published April 20, 2021, which called for dosing of .2 mg per kg of Ivermectin per body weight for three days. This amounts to 15 mg per day for a 150-pound person or 18 mg per day for a 200-pound individual.

The other three Indian states that adopted it are all down as well. Goa is down from 4,195 to 1,647, Uttarakhand is down from 9,624 to 2,903, and Karnataka is down from 50,112 to 31,183. Goa adopted a pre-emptive policy of mass Ivermectin prevention for the entire adult population over age 18 at a dose of 12 mg daily for five days.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu announced on May 14 they were outlawing Ivermectin in favor of the politically correct Remdesivir. As a result, Tamil Nadu’s cases are up in the same time frame from April 20 to May 22 – 10,986 to 35,873 – more than a tripling.

Although Big Pharma and Big Media have scrambled to try, they cannot explain away this natural experiment. As I predicted May 12, they would first argue “the lockdowns worked.” The problem with this is that Tamil Nadu has been on strict lockdown for weeks as their cases have done nothing but climb. So the lockdown did not work.

Their next argument was that “there has been a shift from the highly populated urban areas like Delhi and Mumbai” to the hinterlands, like Tamil Nadu. The big problem is that the adjacent state, Karnataka is just as rural, and its cases are dropping on Ivermectin.

Uttar Pradesh is near the Himalayas and out in the far non-urbanized north where cases are down 84% with Ivermectin. Uttarakhand is even more rural and located in the Himalayas next to Nepal. Its infections are down 70% with Ivermectin.

Their final argument lacked any proof. It was essentially an attempt to smear Ivermectin through association with another drug. It attempted to link Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) with Ivermectin unfairly. While HCQ has become a punchline by the media, scientists like Dr. George Fareed know it is effective against COVID-19 – especially in the early stages. 

Dr. Fareed and his associate, Dr. Brian Tyson, have treated some 6,000 patients with nearly 100% success using a combination of HCQ, Ivermectin, Fluvoxamine, and various nutraceuticals, including zinc Vitamin D.

https://www.thedesertreview.com/health/local-frontline-doctors-modify-covid-treatment-based-on-results/article_9cdded9e-962f-11eb-a59a-f3e1151e98c3.html

Unfortunately, none of this has made it through the censorship of the mainstream media, and the public has not heard about the 200 plus studies that reflect HCQ’s effectiveness against COVID-19. The fact remains that HCQ has an undeserved negative connotation due to its connection with Trump, which is unfortunately used to tarnish other life-saving repurposed drugs, like Ivermectin. For example, in the recent Forbes article, journalist Ray uses the title, “Is Ivermectin the New Hydroxychloroquine?“

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/05/19/is-ivermectin-the-new-hydroxychloroquine-online-interest-in-unproven-covid-drug-surges-as-experts-urge-caution/

Ray does not make a single substantive argument against Ivermectin; instead, he attempts to defame, debase or degrade it by repeating baseless accusations. For example, Ray cited Merck’s recommendation against Ivermectin as evidence of ineffectiveness, while Merck used no evidence to support their claim. In addition, he cited the FDA’s recommendation against Ivermectin, yet the FDA admits they have not reviewed the data on which to base this conclusion:  “The FDA has not reviewed data to support the use of Ivermectin in COVID-19 patients to treat or prevent COVID-19…”

As we all know, Merck was involved in the development of a competing drug and had 356 million reasons to throw its own cheap, unprofitable Ivermectin under the bus. Furthermore, the US government was likewise involved in a significant financial conflict of interest with Merck.

https://trialsitenews.com/is-the-ivermectin-situation-rigged-in-favor-of-industry-is-the-big-tobacco-analogy-appropriate/

The story of Ivermectin is more similar to that of Penicillin. Penicillin has saved almost 200 million lives. In addition, three men shared a Nobel Prize in 1945 for its discovery.

Ivermectin’s discoverers won the 2015 Noble Prize in Medicine, and it has proven to be a life-saving drug in parasitic disease, especially in Africa. Over the past four decades, Ivermectin has saved millions from parasites like strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis – river blindness.

It has already saved tens of thousands from COVID-19 in India in those few locations that use it. It crashed Mexico’s, Slovakia’s, and Zimbabwe’s cases. I remain more convinced than ever that Ivermectin will bring an end to this Pandemic as the word gets out and more people share the book, Ivermectin for the World. A more fitting title to the Forbes piece might be, “Is Ivermectin the New Penicillin?”

Lawmakers in Texas passed a bill on Tuesday which will penalize professional sports teams that don’t play the national anthem before games, according to Fox News.

The bill, dubbed the “Star Spangled Banner Protection Act,” would require written contracts between government entities and pro sports teams in which they would agree to play the national anthem. Failure to do so could result in the loss of state or local subsidies, or the loss of state contracts in the future.

“Texans are tired of sports teams that pander, insulting our national anthem and the men and women who died fighting for our flag,” said Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a staunch advocate for the bill according to Fox News.

“The passage of SB 4 will ensure Texans can count on hearing the Star Spangled Banner at major sports events throughout the state that are played in venues that taxpayers support. We must always remember that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

The bill was passed by the Texas House of Representatives in a 110-34 vote. It previously passed the Texas Senate with bipartisan support in April, with Gov. Greg Abbott expected to sign it into law.

To nobody’s surprise, Democrats criticized the bill, arguing that it constitutes government overreach and violates First Amendment protections. Apparently now they care about free speech.

“Once again, we’re carrying legislation that is openly and aggressively unconstitutional,” said Rep. Gene Wu (D), according to the Houston Chronicle.

The Mavericks drew criticism from local lawmakers last February after the team stopped playing the national anthem at the direction of owner Mark Cuban. The NBA later affirmed a league rule requiring teams to play the anthem before home games.

Cuban told ESPN the decision to stop playing the anthem came after consultations with both NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and the local community.

“In listening to the community, there were quite a few people who voiced their concerns, really their fears that the national anthem did not fully represent them, that their voices were not being heard,” said Cuban at the time.

Authored by Pat Buchanan,

After nine people were shot to death by a public transit worker, who then killed himself in San Jose, the latest mass murder in America, California Governor Gavin Newsom spoke for many on the eve of this Memorial Day weekend.

“What the hell is going on in the United States of America? What the hell is wrong with us?”

Good question.

Indeed, it seems that the country is coming apart.

In May, Congress, to address a spate of criminal assaults on Asian Americans, enacted a new hate crimes law to protect them.

May also witnessed a rash of assaults on Jewish Americans to show the attackers’ hatred of Israel and support for the Palestinians in the Gaza war.

The terms “racist” and “racism” are now commonplace accusations in political discourse and a public square where whites are expected to ritually denounce the “white privilege” into which they were born.

In the year since the death of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter “Defund the Police!” campaign, the shootings and killings of cops and citizens in our great cities have skyrocketed.

In March, and again in April, 167,000 immigrants were caught crossing our southern border illegally. The invaders are now coming not only from Central and South America but also from Africa, the Islamic world and the largest and most populous continent, Asia. And their destiny may be to replace us.

For as the endless invasion proceeds, native-born Americans have ceased to reproduce themselves. Not since the birth dearth of the Great Depression and WWII, when the Silent Generation was born, has the U.S. population experienced such a birth decline as today.

At the same time, a war of all against all in America seems to raise the question, to which recitation of the cliche — “Our diversity is our greatest strength” — no longer seems an adequate response:

Is there no limit to the racial, religious, ideological, political, cultural and ethnic diversity the nation can accommodate before it splinters into its component parts?

In professions of religious belief, atheists, agnostics and secularists have become our largest “congregation,” followed by Catholics and Protestants, both of which are in numerical decline.

Diversity of faiths leads to irreconcilable, clashing opinions about morality on the most divisive social issues of our era: abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, etc.

Racial diversity, too, is bringing back problems unseen since the 1960s.

America was almost 90% white in 1960, but that figure is down to 60% and falling. In 25 years, we will all belong to racial minorities.

Are we Americans still united in our love of country? Do we still take pride in what we have done for our own people and what America has done for the world in the 400 years since Jamestown?

Hardly. Part of the nation buys into the academic and intellectual elites’ version of history, tracing America’s birth as a nation to the arrival of the first slave ship in Virginia in 1619.

We not only disagree about our history; some actually hate our history.

That hate can be seen in the statues and monuments destroyed, not just of Confederate military heroes but of the European explorers who discovered America, the Founding Fathers who created the nation, and the leaders, from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson to Teddy Roosevelt, who built the America we became.

Yet, tens of millions from all over the world still see coming to America as the realization of a life’s dream.

Some look at Western civilization as 500 years of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, slavery and segregation — practiced against people of color. This is the source of the West’s wealth and power, it is said, and that wealth and power should be redistributed to the descendants of the victims of Western rapacity.

For many, equality of opportunity is no longer enough.

We must make restitution, deliver reparations and guarantee a future where an equality of rewards replaces an equality of rights.

Meritocracy must yield to equity.

Elite high schools, such as Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, Stuyvesant in New York and Lowell in San Francisco, must abandon their emphasis on grades, tests and exams to gain admissions and prove progress.

And these schools must be remade to mirror the racial and ethnic composition of the communities where they reside.

And a new cancel culture has taken root in America.

Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, a CNN commentator, was fired for suggesting that Native American institutions and culture played no significant role in the foundation and formation of the American Republic.

“We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans,” Santorum said, adding: “There isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

Impolitic though this rendition was, was it wholly false?

Something is seriously wrong with a country that professes to be great but whose elite cannot abide the mildest of heresies to its established truth.

George Orwell’s dystopian vision written in his book “Nineteen Eighty-Four” could become a reality by 2024 as artificial intelligence technology becomes the all-seeing eye, a top Microsoft executive warned Thursday. 

Microsoft President Brad Smith told BBC’s Panorama George Orwell’s 1984 “could come to pass in 2024” if government regulation doesn’t protect the public against intrusive artificial intelligence surveillance. 

“I’m constantly reminded of George Orwell’s lessons in his book ‘1984.’ You know the fundamental story … was about a government who could see everything that everyone did and hear everything that everyone said all the time,” Smith said on BBC while chatting about China’s use of artificial intelligence to monitor its citizens. 

“Well, that didn’t come to pass in 1984, but if we’re not careful, that could come to pass in 2024,” Smith continued.

“If we don’t enact the laws that will protect the public in the future, we are going to find the technology racing ahead, and it’s going to be very difficult to catch up.”

He warned that Orwell’s view of a government spying on its citizens around the clock is already a reality in some parts of the world. 

Artificial intelligence-led totalitarianism, such as in China, has wiped away the freedoms of its citizens and transformed them into obedient members of the state. A social credit score keeps citizens in check. 

To prevent such a dystopia in the West, lawmakers need to act now, explained Smith. 

In 2019, the billionaire investor Peter Thiel insisted that artificial intelligence was “literally communist.”

He said artificial intelligence concentrates power to monitor citizens. These surveillance tools know more about a person than they know about themselves.

Artificial intelligence is a crucial tool for governments to adopt an Orwellian state of surveillance and control. 

But can we trust lawmakers and “Big Tech” who want to consolidate power to prevent such a dystopia? 

It’s hard to say, considering politicians have only one objective: stay in power.

Suppose we can’t trust politicians to protect our freedoms and interests; instead, they side with mega-corporations. In that case, we must raise our understanding of privacy shields that protect us from artificial intelligence spying on us.