Americans from all walks of life said they couldn’t wait to receive a check with a small percentage of the money the government had already taken from them.
A small percentage of the population said they thought it would be way more efficient for the economy if the government just didn’t take the money in the first place. These people were shouted down as “libertarian conspiracy theorist wackos” and told to move to Somalia.
U.S.—Americans have reported they’re very optimistic about the stimulus package passed by Congress last week. In particular, people all around the country are excited to get paid with a little bit of the money that they paid the federal government already.
Americans from all walks of life said they couldn’t wait to receive a check with a small percentage of the money the government had already taken from them.
“I can’t wait to get that $1,200.00 check of my own money,” said one man in Texas, rubbing his hands together. “Surely this will get the economy back on track.”
From the rich to the poor, American citizens spent many hours dreaming of all the things they will spend their newfound riches on. “With $1200, I could save enough to pay my taxes on time this year,” said one woman in Los Angeles. “Thanks so much, Congress. You’re the real heroes here.”
A small percentage of the population said they thought it would be way more efficient for the economy if the government just didn’t take the money in the first place. These people were shouted down as “libertarian conspiracy theorist wackos” and told to move to Somalia.
Sadly, by the time all the administration costs, government pet projects, and handouts were factored in, the stimulus each American was to receive became a negative amount, forcing Congress to raise taxes to pay for a new stimulus bill.
With America’s armed forces soon to fall under the control of a Congress that will, in all likelihood, do everything they can to keep our troops overseas, it’s time for the states to step up. This is why I will soon be filing the Defend the Guard Act in South Carolina, a bill that would allow the governor to withhold national guard troops from being brought under federal control.
While President Trump was negotiating yet another peace agreement this week — this time between Israel and Morocco — his enemies beat the drums of war in their ongoing effort to overthrow the America First foreign policy.
It’s sad that throughout the entirety of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the swamp has worked around the clock to dismantle his efforts toward peace. Even worse, with the passage of the disastrous, $740.5 billion 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), it appears the neocons and pro-war left will soon regain the levers of federal power, plunging America into another four years of stupid, pointless, endless wars abroad.
With America’s armed forces soon to fall under the control of a Congress that will, in all likelihood, do everything they can to keep our troops overseas, it’s time for the states to step up. This is why I will soon be filing the Defend the Guard Act in South Carolina, a bill that would allow the governor to withhold national guard troops from being brought under federal control.
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, was one of the precious few voices of reason in the congressional vote on the NDAA. In his speech before the Senate, he said, “They believe that a president has the power to go to war anywhere anytime, but when a president tries to remove troops, they say ‘Oh no no. What we really want are 535 generals in Congress to tell him he can’t leave a war.’” Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, also took to Twitter to criticize the bill, writing, “This NDAA bill contains specific language to make it harder for the president to bring our troops home from Afghanistan.”
But heroes of liberty like Mr. Paul and Mr. Massie cannot fight this issue alone. Without reinforcements from elected officials across the board and a powerful grassroots movement to end America’s military expeditionalism, our efforts will never amount to anything beyond empty rhetoric.
In 1950, my grandfather was drafted into the Korean conflict. I grew up hearing stories of courage and sacrifice. The problem with American involvement in Korea was that it didn’t follow a declaration of war, but a U.N. decision to get the U.S. to intervene.
Undeclared war — something with which our country has become painfully familiar over the last half-century — plunges our country into foreign quagmires based on the whims of politicians, rather than American interests.
In Article I of the United States Constitution, Congress is given the authority to declare war; history shows that this check on war is critical to the survival of our republic. The Founders repeatedly warned of the dangers of excessive foreign intervention, having studied the fall of countless republics into entangled empires.
In Thomas Jefferson’s 1801 address to Congress, he said that the key to preserving our republic was “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” In 1795, James Madison said that “of all enemies to public liberty war, is perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.” Mr. Trump has tried to follow this advice and our country has seen the benefits of peace and commerce in recent years.
The pressure needed to apply to Washington if we are to see this objective through will not generate itself; it will have to emanate from leaders from across the country who are sick of seeing brave American service men and women shipped overseas with no objective, no plan, and no exit strategy. As I file the Defend the Guard Act in South Carolina, I call on state legislators elsewhere to do the same in their legislatures.
• Stewart Jones is a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives.
In what became known as the Great Barrington Declaration, reputable infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists explained that the death toll caused by the lockdowns will far surpass anything precipitated by covid.
In a New York Timesop-ed full of musings on how to “build a better, different, human future,” Pope Francis praised world governments for putting “the well-being of their people first” while ridiculing critics of the covid-19 lockdowns.
Juxtaposed with Francis’s condemnation of skeptics in the prestigious newspaper, Tom Woods’s antilockdown “Covid Cult” speech was deleted by YouTube two days prior. That video, which had already gone viral, addressed the “common good” argument that the pope would make.
Considering how wrong both the legacy and new media have been on covid and the lockdowns from the start, it’s no wonder that platforms such as YouTube have a personal beef with Woods or his sober message calling out the pseudoscience that’s been used to destroy people’s lives and livelihoods.
With the support of the Times and other establishment outlets, Francis urged readers to consider the “common good” as a demand for sacrifice. Covid, a flu-like respiratory illness that impacts only a tiny fraction of the population and usually not fatally, is the perfect excuse for mass sacrifice.
Francis wrote that governments are “acting decisively to protect health and to save lives” by “imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.” But if you were to base your understanding of what lockdowns have accomplished on what Francis had to say alone, you would think we were living, or dying, in 1347 under the Black Death.
“Governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths” caused a great deal of pain, the supreme pontiff wrote.
While the jury is still out on what should even be considered a covid death, there is, indeed, enough evidence to suggest that the “strict measures to contain the outbreak” that he praised simply have not worked.
The Wrong Approach
During his speech, Woods argued that the response to covid was and remains completely disproportionate, especially as we become more aware of how the virus operates. He also chronicled how the nearly universal lockdowns caused more pain and suffering than the disease itself.
“There are other concerns in the world other than covid,” Woods said, a fact completely ignored by Francis in his op-ed.
Woods further argued that countries like Spain and Italy, which “locked down [early] and hard” saw no benefit from doing so. Countries like Sweden, which never locked down, saw a fraction of the deaths that the “listen to the science” crowd estimated while seeing no lockdown-related suffering and excess deaths.
As a matter of fact, even medical researchers think that lockdowns were a mistake.
In what became known as the Great Barrington Declaration, reputable infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists explained that the death toll caused by the lockdowns will far surpass anything precipitated by covid.
Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health—leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden.
Allowing iron-fisted shutdowns to remain in place, the group of scientists added, “will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.”
Despite their warnings, which first appeared online on October 4, 2020, Francis did not hesitate to mock critics of lockdowns for their alleged overreliance on “personal freedom” to justify their opinion. They are going against the common good, the pontiff wrote, and they are serving “idols.”
After governments imposed “responsible” lockdowns, Francis argued, “some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions—as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!”
They are wrong, he jabbed.
Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals. It means having a regard for all citizens and seeking to respond effectively to the needs of the least fortunate.
Then why isn’t he?
The Seen and the Unseen
In his now famous “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen” essay, French liberal school economist Claude-Frederic Bastiat wrote that when it comes to the economy, an act or law brought about by the government “gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects.”
Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause—it is seen. The others unfold in succession—they are not seen.
What many lockdown critics have consistently argued is that it is the effect that isn’t immediately seen that would be more costly to society than covid itself. It is exactly that concern that has driven the medical professionals associated with the Barrington Declaration to speak up, as well as countless working-class Americans and Europeans who found no other way to vent their frustration but to take it to the streets, as highlighted by Woods:
In Italy and the United Kingdom, at least some people are fighting back. The last lockdown took everything they had.
One video, which has gone viral, shows an Italian woman crying that she has lost everything, and has nothing to feed her child. I guess she better listen to the science right?
Yet to Francis, the common good dictates we lock down the globe, jeopardizing the future of the young, the livelihood of the working class, and condemning countless kids to a life of mental distress.
If the concern for “the least fortunate” is what drives Francis, pursuing a strawman on the New York Times isn’t how he wins.
If he is honest in calling for more solidarity in the age of covid, he should begin by being charitable with those praying for an end to the lockdowns. As countless people suffer both physical and emotional pain over the draconian restrictions on basic freedoms, the number of lives lost due to what Woods calls the “covid cult” will only rise. Author:
Alice Salles was born and raised in Brazil but has lived in America for over ten years. She now lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana with her husband Nick Hankoff and their three children.
is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.
With lorries lining the roads, food shortages & the UK cut adrift by its former EU allies to suffer its fate, the prime minister is in a pickle he won’t be able to bluster his way out of this time.
Britain is in crisis, a multifaceted one at that. Over the weekend, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that areas of London and south-east England would be placed under “Tier 4 restrictions,” or in other words, a total lockdown, following the revelation that a new mutation of Covid-19 has gained rapid traction. The new variant of the virus is reportedly 70 percent more contagious, and has been described as “out of control” by Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
If that wasn’t bad enough, a growing number of countries, including most of Europe, have subsequently responded to the development by blockading travel from the UK. Most alarmingly, this has also included incoming lorries and freight from the port of Dover into France via the Channel tunnel, the artery of Britain’s supply chains to the continent. Although it will not be a permanent measure, this has provoked serious warnings from politicians and supermarkets concerning potential food and supply shortages throughout the country.
Of course, all the talk about cargo delays, Calais and Dover sounds very familiar. Because in the background of this crisis is the looming deadline for Brexit trade talks between the UK and the European Union (EU). Johnson has repeatedly threatened a no-deal outcome if he does not secure preferential terms for Britain, and while there is some suggestion he may be bluffing as a negotiating tactic, suddenly this strategy doesn’t seem too smart on his behalf. Why? Because what is currently happening with Covid-19 is a taster of what a no-deal outcome will be like, and for the UK, it doesn’t look good at all. With potential shortages and national panic, the coronavirus crisis has just served to undermine the prime minister’s negotiating hand. Boris has failed the country on multiple fronts.
The entire logic of Brexit in its most dogmatic form is premised on the belief that the UK does not need to rely on the EU, and is, in fact, fundamentally “better off” as an “independent sovereign nation.” This attitude has thrived on a sentiment of national identity, rather than on geographic and economic realities. Britain is perceived to be “global,” born out of imperial nostalgia, rather than part of Europe, which is deemed to be separate and different. Stark warnings of potential repercussions from leaving the bloc have for years been dismissed under the popularised term “project fear” – and as the debate became polarised and toxified, many stopped listening.
The Conservative government has actively pushed a mantra of Brexit optimism: “This is going to be a fantastic year for Britain,” boasted Johnson in January, talking of potential new trade deals with far-flung countries which Brussels apparently got in the way of. As talks have approached the climax, with just 10 days left until the transition period comes to an end, he’s not hesitated from weaponising the threat of a no-deal, saying Britain will walk away and even subtly threatening to deploy the Royal Navy against France to protect fishing rights. Of course, it may play triumphantly domestically, but leaders on the continent have long deciphered that this isn’t really serious and that Boris is playing to the political gallery.
Now, he’s been made to look the fool. Brexit is one thing, but the prime minister’s utterly catastrophic approach to Covid-19 is another. European leaders must be laughing as Johnson has bluffed over a no-deal Brexit, only to see his virus mismanagement shut down Dover in the precise way his trade threats would do. It blows apart the fantasy that leaving without an agreement will be fine, and illustrates to the public just what beckons in that scenario, meaning that support for his position, and thus his negotiating hand, is seriously undermined. Brussels may now believe it can make him capitulate, not the other way round. The overlapping disasters of Covid-19 controls and a no-deal would serve a hammer blow to an already depleted UK economy, and his support would evaporate.
So, what does Johnson do now? The freight situation will not last for the long term and will eventually be resolved before it inflicts serious problems, irrespective of the spread of the virus at home. However, Brexit negotiations are going on simultaneously regardless. Now that Europe has shown that it can bring the UK economy to heel with collective action, Boris’ bluster isn’t going to wash. The prime minister may be inclined finally to compromise on EU demands at the last minute, or if the timing doesn’t suffice, even extend the transition agreement.
Of course, either of those options might also be politically destructive for him, but what choice does he have? This is a true case of the ‘Prime Minister’s New Clothes’ – initially going against Europe with tough rhetoric, when in fact he had nothing. Now everyone sees the naked truth for what it is, and it’s not a pretty sight.
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These batteries – EV batteries – are also enormous, mainly because people expect an EV to duplicate (at least) the performance capabilities of a non-electric car. To do that requires about 1,000 pounds of batteries on average, which orders-of-magnitude increases the raw materials demand that goes into batteries, as well as the energy required to make the batteries, which are among the least renewable (in terms of what goes into making them) things on the market.
You have probably heard of “Peak Oil.” We have been hearing about it for the past 60 years. You probably have not heard about Peak Cobalt. Expect to hear about it – but probably not until after non-electric cars have been regulated off the market. The cost of electric cars is a function of the cost of cobalt – including the human cost of this unpleasant but necessary-to-EV-batteries substance.
Would you wait 15 minutes to get a fast-food hamburger?
Electric cars will make you wait longer. This includes even those which are touted as being capable of receiving a “fast” charge in 15 minutes or so. Because you’ll have to wait for the car plugged-in ahead of you to “fast” charge.
This assumes you’re second in line. If you’re third . . .
Well, they’ll just install more places to plug in. It is not as easy as it sounds because of the problem in physics of two objects not being able to occupy the same space at the same time. To achieve the same capacity to charge as many electric cars as a gas station is capable of refueling in an hour, it would be necessary to at least quintuple the physical size of the charging station, to compensate for the quintupling of the time it takes to recharge each EV vs. the time it takes to refuel a non-electric car.
At a gas station, a car occupies its spot at the pump for about five minutes; thus, in 15 minutes it is possible for a single pump to refuel three cars. But if it takes 15 minutes to recharge a single EV, it would take two more places to plug in – and the space for those additional two cars – to equal the throughput capability of the gas station’s single pump.
Well, they’ll figure out a way to reduce recharging time such that it’s about the same as the time it takes to gas up a non-electric car. The problem there is that the faster you recharge a battery, the more you reduce its life – and increase the odds of a fire.
It is usually not a problem – with lawn mower batteries and such – because you have the time to wait. But it’s a problem with electric car batteries, if you don’t like to wait. Unless you don’t mind risking a fire. Or reducing the useful life of the battery – which costs a great deal more to replace than a lawn mower battery.
These batteries – EV batteries – are also enormous, mainly because people expect an EV to duplicate (at least) the performance capabilities of a non-electric car. To do that requires about 1,000 pounds of batteries on average, which orders-of-magnitude increases the raw materials demand that goes into batteries, as well as the energy required to make the batteries, which are among the least renewable (in terms of what goes into making them) things on the market.
You have probably heard of “Peak Oil.” We have been hearing about it for the past 60 years. You probably have not heard about Peak Cobalt. Expect to hear about it – but probably not until after non-electric cars have been regulated off the market. The cost of electric cars is a function of the cost of cobalt – including the human cost of this unpleasant but necessary-to-EV-batteries substance.
There’s another problem, unique to things powered by electricity.
You cannot just pour it in, as you do with gasoline. Electricity doesn’t sit ready-to-go in storage tanks, underneath the pumps. It has to be transmitted as demanded – via cables from the generating source – and this requires cables of much greater capacity than your household extension cord.
This is why it is not possible to “fast” charge an EV at most private homes. You can reduce the waiting time from eight or more hours but not to 15 minutes. Not without upgrading your house to commercial-grade electric capacity.
And then there’s that increased risk of burning your house down.
Finally, a word about “fast” charging – which even where feasible is only partial charging. You cannot fully “refill” a battery “fastly” – as you can fully refuel a non-electric car’s tank, quickly.
Which means more frequent charging.
Which, in turn, compounds the throughput problem as well as the charge-capacity and fire-potential problems, all those electric cars recharging in a hurry, more frequently.
And losing their capacity to be recharged more quickly – the more often they are “fast” charged.
These are EV facts but most people aren’t aware of them for the same reason they’re unaware of the 99.8-plus percent chance you won’t die if you get the WuFlu, if you’re not very elderly and very sick already. It is also why most people have no idea that the big pharmaceutical companies who stand to reap billions in profits from mandated or coerced vaccinations are immune from being sued for any sicknesses caused by their vaccines.
The reason for this lack of awareness is the same.
You are being sold on something you probably wouldn’t buy, if you knew what you were buying. They want you to think you are buying something else. Something that makes sense. But if that were the case, why don’t they give you all the facts?
That they don’t ought to give you a moment’s pause.
. . . .
Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!
If this video doesn’t get your blood pressure up after months of being forced to wear masks “for your safety,” then you’re probably dead already from the Chinese WuFlu (or at least that’s what the coroner scribbled on your death certificate).
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and Representative Wendy Ullman (D-Bad People) were caught on a hot mic giggling about the “political theater” they were about to partake in at a press conference. Wolf is heard telling Ullman he’s going to take off his mask to speak while Ullman responds that she’s going to keep hers on for the cameras to make sure people see her in it. “I’m waiting so we can do a little political theater,” she says, laughing. “So it’s on camera!”
In other words, it’s all a game and you’re the butt of the joke. Enjoy this sh*tshow while I contemplate throwing a brick through a window somewhere.
Some people may be fooled by hearing that, “You use others in markets; using people harms them.” But that is far less likely if you clarify which meaning of “use” you have in mind. “You utilized others’ willingly supplied services, therefore you harmed them” will convince far fewer people. So language misuse, abetted by sloppy thinking, can transform mutual benefits from uncoerced market exchanges into the fantasy of exploitation theory.
A very common rip on market arrangements is that they use people. For instance, I have come across many versions of “love people and use things rather than loving things and using people.” As Paul Heyne expressed the sense of it, “such a system seems somehow to violate our profound moral conviction that nothing is more valuable than individual persons, and that each person ought to be treated as a unique end, never as a means to some further end.”
The irony is that those who love liberty derive their endorsement of market arrangements from the primacy of individuals. As Leonard Read wrote, “An individualist…looks upon society as the upshot, outcome, effect, recapitulation incidental to what is valued above all else, namely, each distinctive individual human being.”
What Do We Mean by “Use”?
So why have “market arrangements use people” criticisms persisted, even though the central defense of such arrangements is that it benefits the individuals involved? In large part, it comes from sloppy misuse of the word “use.”
While there is widespread moral condemnation of “using” people, use has different meanings. Use can mean “utilize or employ,” with no implication of harm to others. That is what we mean when we say someone uses a hammer. It is also what happens when people voluntarily provide their services to advance others’ purposes in markets. In contrast, use can also mean “abuse or harm,” particularly as a result of force or fraud. That is what we mean when we say, “you pretended to care about me, but you were just using me.”
The first meaning is consistent with either imposing no harm on others or benefitting them (as in mutually acceptable market arrangements, which individuals would not otherwise enter into); the second meaning requires that others are harmed. And not clearly distinguishing the different meanings introduces serious confusion.
Some people may be fooled by hearing that, “You use others in markets; using people harms them.” But that is far less likely if you clarify which meaning of “use” you have in mind. “You utilized others’ willingly supplied services, therefore you harmed them” will convince far fewer people. So language misuse, abetted by sloppy thinking, can transform mutual benefits from uncoerced market exchanges into the fantasy of exploitation theory.
Ends and Means, Not Ends or Means
There is another logical problem that arises when we say we should treat people solely as ends in themselves and never as means for our purposes. It is not an “either/or” choice. Those we deal with voluntarily are both ends in themselves and the means by which we advance our ends.
What each of us offers others in voluntary arrangements is means to better advance others’ ends. But to treat goods and services others provide us voluntarily as means to our ends does not demean them as individuals; it is simply inherent in mutual benefit. To miss that distinction and so condemn such arrangements as the unethical use of others comes very close to the self-contradictory assertion that nothing mutually beneficial is allowable. Instead, we should laud rather than lambast a system that can dovetail the often incompatible plans and purposes of multitudes of different individuals, without abusing them or their rights, to expand what can actually be achieved.
Letting Others Pick How to Best Advance Their Ends
Further, when people freely choose their arrangements, we need to notice that doing so respects others as important ends in themselves in a crucial way that is absent when others dictate what is allowable. Under freedom, every individual can choose for themselves how to best use the means they have at their disposal to advance their own ends. To miss the fact that just because we primarily do this indirectly, exchanging our means for the means others control, as when I exchange my labor for your money (i.e., claims on resources), which I then use to advance the ends I choose, is to make a serious analytical error.
Mutually voluntary arrangements are those whose participants each believes best advance their ends without violating others’ similar pursuit of their ends. And what can better advance others’ ends than letting them choose how to use their current means most productively as they see it? As Phillip Wicksteed wrote in The Common Sense of Political Economy, voluntary economic relations ease “the limitations…of their own direct resources…by the very act that brings a corresponding liberation to those with whom they deal…[leaving] no room to bring against it the charge of being intrinsically sordid and degrading.”
How “Using” Others Beats Benevolence in a Complex World
Further, the hypothetical ideal of solely treating people as objects of benevolence rather than utilizing their services through mutually beneficial exchanges is unattainable. As Wicksteed put it, “The limitation of our powers would prevent our taking an equally active interest in every one’s affairs.” In any society larger than an immediate family, we simply cannot know enough to organize relationships based on benevolence. Consider the sheer number of transactions and transactors involved in our economic arrangements. Vast numbers of people are involved for even the simplest products, much less more complex ones. In such circumstances, the alternatives are not coordinating relationships via exchange (another name for persuasion) or via charity, but between coordinating relationships via exchange or coordinating them far less well, if at all, because it exceeds our knowledge and capabilities.
As Paul Heyne encapsulated the issue:
When money prices, rather than concern for each other as persons, coordinate social transactions, social cooperation becomes possible on a more extensive scale. Those who would like to force all social transactions into the personal mode do not realize how much of what they now take for granted would become wholly impossible in the world of their ideals…They are ignoring the incredible complexity of the system of social cooperation by means of which we are fed, clothed, housed, warmed, healed, transported, comforted, entertained, challenged, inspired, educated and generally served.
Conclusion
Claims that market arrangements involve the unethical “using” of others are of lengthy pedigree. But they are also of questionable merit.
They rhetorically transform the utilization of other individuals’ services in ways that benefit all parties involved into “using” others to their imagined detriment. They treat the issue as a choice between treating others as means or as ends, when people are ends in themselves and the providers of the means for others to best advance their ends. Honoring others as ends in themselves also means letting them choose which use of their means can best achieve their ends. And if we were to reject letting individuals utilize their services for others voluntarily, as they see fit, it would leave us with only benevolence as the basis of all our relationships. In a complex world, however, that would not advance the good we do for one another; it would destroy many of the forms of social cooperation that voluntary arrangements have produced so dependably that we rely on them daily.
Consequently, careful thinking, not cowed or manipulated by misleading arguments, should lead us to reject the “market arrangements use people” criticism. If we accept the premise that individuals and their development are our ultimate ends, the voluntary arrangements they evolve are, as Friedrich Hayek pointed out, among society’s greatest creations, not its nemesis. Author:
Gary M. Galles is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University and an adjunct scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His research focuses on public finance, public choice, economic education, organization of firms, antitrust, urban economics, liberty, and the problems that undermine effective public policy. In addition to his most recent book, Pathways to Policy Failures (2020), his books include Lines of Liberty (2016), Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014), and Apostle of Peace (2013).
While this information is accurate, it has also been available for months, so we must ask: why are they reporting it now? Is it to make it appear the vaccine works?
The “gold standard” Sars-Cov-2 tests are based on polymerase chain reaction (PCR). PCR works by taking nucleotides – tiny fragments of DNA or RNA – and replicating them until they become something large enough to identify. The replication is done in cycles, with each cycle doubling the amount of genetic material. The number of cycles it takes to produce something identifiable is known as the “cycle threshold” or “CT value”. The higher the CT value, the less likely you are to be detecting anything significant.
This new WHO memo states that using a high CT value to test for the presence of Sars-Cov-2 will result in false-positive results.
To quote their own words [our emphasis]:
Users of RT-PCR reagents should read the IFU carefully to determine if manual adjustment of the PCR positivity threshold is necessary to account for any background noise which may lead to a specimen with a high cycle threshold (Ct) value result being interpreted as a positive result.
They go on to explain [again, our emphasis]:
The design principle of RT-PCR means that for patients with high levels of circulating virus (viral load), relatively few cycles will be needed to detect virus and so the Ct value will be low. Conversely, when specimens return a high Ct value, it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain.
Of course, none of this is news to anyone who has been paying attention. That PCR tests were easily manipulated and potentially highly inaccurate has been one of the oft-repeated battle cries of those of us opposing the “pandemic” narrative, and the policies it’s being used to sell.
Many articles have been written about it, by many experts in the field, medical journalists and other researchers. It’s been commonly available knowledge, for months now, that any test using a CT value over 35 is potentially meaningless.
Even Dr Anthony Fauci has publicly admitted that a cycle threshold over 35 is going to be detecting “dead nucleotides”, not a living virus.
Despite all this, it is known that many labs around the world have been using PCR tests with CT values over 35, even into the low 40s.
So why has the WHO finally decided to say this is wrong? What reason could they have for finally choosing to recognise this simple reality?
The answer to that is potentially shockingly cynical: We have a vaccine now. We don’t need false positives anymore.
Notionally, the system has produced its miracle cure.
So, after everyone has been vaccinated, all the PCR tests being done will be done “under the new WHO guidelines”, and running only 25-30 cycles instead of 35+.
Lo and behold, the number of “positive cases” will plummet, and we’ll have confirmation that our miracle vaccine works.
…as long as we all do as we’re told. Any signs of dissent – masses of people refusing the vaccine, for example – and the CT value can start to climb again, and they bring back their magical disease.
Blaming Russia is safer than blaming say…the CIA or Middle Eastern “friends”.
As Moon of Alabama explains, the only technical analysis we’ve seen of the alleged hack (courtesy of cybersecurity firm FireEye) makes no claim that Russia was responsible for it,
The Communist Party of China has been covertly sending arms to extremist Antifa militants in the United States in preparation for the civil war which is expected to take place after Joe Biden declares himself President for Life and institutes a Marxist dictatorship. The weapons shipments include rocket launchers, directed energy weapons, nunchucks and ninja throwing stars.
Unfortunately I cannot provide evidence for this shocking revelation as doing so would compromise my sources and methods, but trust me it’s definitely true and must be acted upon immediately. I recommend President Trump declare martial law without a moment’s hesitation and begin planning a military response to these Chinese aggressions.
How does this make you feel? Was your first impulse to begin scanning for evidence of the incendiary claim I made in my opening paragraph?
It would be perfectly reasonable if it was. I am after all some random person on the internet whom you have probably never met, and you’ve no reason to accept any bold claim I might make on blind faith. It would make sense for you to want to see some verification of my claim, and then dismiss my claim as baseless hogwash when I failed to provide that verification.
If you’re a more regular reader, it would have also been reasonable for you to guess that I was doing a bit. But imagine if I wasn’t? Imagine if I really was claiming that the Chinese government is arming Antifa ninja warriors to kill patriotic Americans in the coming Biden Wars. How crazy would you have to be to believe what I was saying without my providing hard, verifiable evidence for my claims?
Now imagine further that this is something I’ve made false claims about many times in the past. If every few years I make a new claim about some naughty government arming Antifa super soldiers in a great communist uprising, which turns out later to have been bogus.
Well you’d dismiss me as a crackpot, wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t blame you. That would be the only reasonable response to such a ridiculous spectacle.
And yet if I were an employee of a US government agency making unproven incendiary claims about a government that isn’t aligned with the US-centralized power alliance, the entire political/media class would be parroting what I said as though it’s an established fact. Even though US government agencies have an extensive and well-documented history of lying about such things.
Trump’s former homeland security adviser: “The magnitude of this ongoing attack is hard to overstate…The Russians have had access to a number of important networks for 6 to 9 months…The access they now enjoy could be used for far more than spying.” https://t.co/ACCPVvCNZ7
Today we’re all expected to be freaking out about Russia again because Russia hacked the United States again right before a new president took office again, so now it’s very important that we support new cold war escalations from both the outgoing president and the incoming president again. We’re not allowed to see the evidence that this actually happened again, but it’s of utmost importance that we trust and support new aggressions against Russia anyway. Again.
The New York Times has a viral op-ed going around titled “I Was the Homeland Security Adviser to Trump. We’re Being Hacked.” The article’s author Thomas P Bossert warns ominously that “the networks of the federal government and much of corporate America are compromised by a foreign nation” perpetrated by “the Russian intelligence agency known as the S.V.R., whose tradecraft is among the most advanced in the world.”
Rather than using its supreme tradecraft to interfere in the November election ensuring the victory of the president we’ve been told for years is a Russian asset by outlets like The New York Times, Bossert informs us that the SVR instead opted to hack a private American IT company called SolarWinds whose software is widely used by the US government.
“Unsuspecting customers then downloaded a corrupted version of the software, which included a hidden back door that gave hackers access to the victim’s network,” Bossert explains, saying that “The magnitude of this ongoing attack is hard to overstate.” Its magnitude is so great that Bossert says Trump must “severely punish the Russians” for perpetrating it, and cooperate with the incoming Biden team in helping to ensure that that punishment continues seamlessly between administrations.
The problem is that, as usual, we’ve been given exactly zero evidence for any of this. As Moon of Alabama explains, the only technical analysis we’ve seen of the alleged hack (courtesy of cybersecurity firm FireEye) makes no claim that Russia was responsible for it, yet the mass media are flagrantly asserting as objective, verified fact that Russia is behind this far-reaching intrusion into US government networks, citing only anonymous sources if they cite anything at all.
And of course where the media class goes so too does the barely-separate political class. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin told CNN in a recent interview that this invisible, completely unproven cyberattack constitutes “virtually a declaration of war by Russia on the United States.” Which is always soothing language to hear as the Russian government announces the development of new hypersonic missiles as part of a new nuclear arms race it attributes to US cold war escalations.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald is one of the few high-profile voices who’ve had the temerity to stick his head above the parapet and point out the fact that we have seen exactly zero evidence for these incendiary claims, for which he is of course currently being raked over the coals on Twitter.
“I know it doesn’t matter. I know it’s wrong to ask the question. I know asking the question raises grave doubts about one’s loyalties and patriotism,” Greenwald sarcastically tweeted. “But has there been any evidence publicly presented, let alone dispositive proof, that Russia is responsible for this hack?”
Perhaps they have information sources they can’t describe without compromising sources and methods?
“Perhaps they have information sources they can’t describe without compromising sources and methods?” chimed inArs Technica‘s Timothy B Lee in response to Greenwald’s query, a textbook reply from establishment narrative managers whenever anyone questions where the evidence is for any of these invisible attacks on US sovereignty.
“Of course they can’t show us the evidence!” proponents of establishment Russia hysteria always say. “They’d compromise their sources and methods if they did!”
US spook agencies always say this about evidence for US spook agency claims about governments long targeted for destruction by US spook agencies. We can’t share the evidence with you because the evidence is classified. It’s secret evidence. The evidence is invisible.
Which always works out very nicely for the US spook agencies, I must say.
Hmm… America Keeps Getting Attacked By Nations It Hates In Ways Only The CIA Can See
I’d like to tell you a folktale. It’s called “The Emperor’s New 9/11”.https://t.co/uduUCajFUx
Secret, invisible evidence is not evidence. If the public cannot see the evidence behind the claims being made by the powerful, then those claims are unproven. It would never be acceptable for anyone in power to say “This important thing with potentially world-altering consequences definitely happened, but you’ll just have to trust us because the evidence is secret.” In a post-Iraq invasion world it is orders of magnitude more unacceptable, and should therefore be dismissed until hard, verifiable evidence is provided.
Isn’t it interesting how all the Pearl Harbors and 9/11s of our day are completely invisible to the public? We can’t see cyber-intrusions for ourselves like we could see fallen buildings and smoking naval bases; they’re entirely hidden from our view. Not only are they entirely hidden from our view, the evidence that they happened is kept secret from us as well. And the mass media just treat this as normal and fine. Government agencies with an extensive history of lying are allowed to make completely unsubstantiated and unverifiable claims about governments long targeted by those same government agencies, and the institutions responsible for informing the public about what’s going on in the world simply repeat it as fact.
Sure it’s possible that Russia hacked the US. It’s possible that the US government has been in contact with extraterrestrials, too. It’s possible that the Chinese government is covertly arming Antifa samurai in preparation for a civil war. But we do not imbue these things with the power of belief until we are provided with an amount of evidence that rises to the level required in a post-Iraq invasion world.
These people have not earned our trust, they have earned our pointed and aggressive skepticism. We must act accordingly.
_____________________________________
Image via Pixabay
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Poems For Rebels or my old bookWoke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Berlatsky whined,“parents are tyrants. ‘parent’ is an oppressive class, like rich people or white people.”
Lewis further reveals her intellectual obtuseness and foolish anti-family fanaticism by declaring, “even when the private nuclear household poses no direct physical or mental threat to one’s person – no spouse-battering, no child rape, and no queer-bashing – the private family qua mode of social reproduction still, frankly, sucks. It genders, nationalizes and races us… It makes us believe we are ‘individuals.’”
Michael McCaffrey is a writer and cultural critic who lives in Los Angeles. His work can be read at RT, Counterpunch and at his website mpmacting.com/blog. He is also the host of the popular cinema podcast Looking California and Feeling Minnesota. Follow him on Twitter @MPMActingCo
Children raised in a nuclear family are safer, healthier, happier, and more successful. So, of course, the radicals want to abolish it and raise kids in communes, because “parents are tyrants.”
2020 has been a year of pandemics.
The most prominent of these is coronavirus, which has killed over a million people worldwide and wreaked havoc on the global economy.
But it isn’t the only problematic outbreak to ravage the globe in 2020 – the pandemic of woke idiocy continues to rage unabated.
One particularly imbecilic strain of this vicious virus is the agenda that espouses eliminating the nuclear family.
As a parent and a leftist, I find this assault on parents and nuclear families to be the height of self-serving and self-defeating intellectual masturbation.
A perfect example of this mindless mania is a recent tweet from Noah Berlatsky, a pissant provocateur and philosophical poseur who writes for the Guardian and the Atlantic magazine. Berlatsky whined, “parents are tyrants. ‘parent’ is an oppressive class, like rich people or white people.”
He followed that belch into the woke echo chamber with this equally odious one: “There are things you can try to do to minimize the abuse that’s endemic to the parent/child relationship, but it’s always there.”
Apparently, someone didn’t change baby Berlatsky’s dirty diaper fast enough and now we all have to deal with the stink.
Sadly, Berlatsky’s buffoonery is not an outlier, as this anti-family mindset is rampant among the woke left. Examples of this absurd agenda being aggressively pushed abound.
Black Lives Matter, the standard bearer for woke, fact-free, emotion-fueled idiocy in 2020, and which has garnered establishment support and millions in corporate donations, not only declare that they want to “abolish police,” but also “abolish the family.”
Flagship left-wing publications like the Nation, Vice, and Jacobin have all in recent months and years dedicated time and energy to the malignant anti-family cause.
In addition, Sophie Lewis, a self-described “feminist thinker,” which she proves is an oxymoron, has made a name for herself attacking the nuclear family in her book ‘Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against the Family’.
Lewis, an Oxford-educated bulls**t artist, uses pretentious language and provocative statements to camouflage her laughably pubescent arguments.
An example of Lewis’ utopianist jackassery is found in her article, ‘The Coronavirus Crisis Shows It’s Time to Abolish the Family’, where her “logical” approach to combat the virus is revealed as, “Free all prisoners and detainees now… and dismiss all the workers with full pay so they can… pursue laziness for at least the next decade.”
Lewis likes tilting at windmills as evidenced by her desire to “denaturalize the mother-child bond” and to promote “the idea that babies belong to anyone – the idea that the product of gestational labor gets transferred as property to a set of people.”
Lewis further reveals her intellectual obtuseness and foolish anti-family fanaticism by declaring, “even when the private nuclear household poses no direct physical or mental threat to one’s person – no spouse-battering, no child rape, and no queer-bashing – the private family qua mode of social reproduction still, frankly, sucks. It genders, nationalizes and races us… It makes us believe we are ‘individuals.’”
Individuals? Perish the thought!
Of course, according to the anti-family left, the answer to the parent problem is that, like Hillary Clinton long ago taught us… it takes a village to raise a child.
While it may very well take a village to satiate Hillary’s husband’s gargantuan sexual appetite, history shows us that communes and communal parenting are never a healthy option for children or society.
For instance, a bevy of high-profile Hollywood stars have grown up in communes and cults where the nuclear family was replaced with a communal approach and it was more ordeal than ideal.
The famed Arquette family, which includes Roseanne, Patricia, and David, grew up in a commune, as did Winona Ryder. None of them speak highly of the experience, which included a lack of electricity and running water and rampant drug use.
Rose McGowan, as well as Joaquin and River Phoenix, grew up in the communal, ‘free love’ Children of God sect that was rife with child sexual abuse.
McGowan said of the experience, “There’s a trail of some very damaged children that were in this group… I got out by the skin of my teeth.”
Studies show that stepparents or non-biological guardians of children are astronomically more likely to harm children than biological parents.
Yes, there are certainly awful parents in the world who abuse and neglect their own biological children, but Berlatsky bemoaning parental power dynamics and Lewis lamenting gestational labor are, ironically, the intellectual equivalent of a toddler’s tantrum.
Wanting to eliminate the nuclear family because some people have had traumatic experiences is infinitely asinine and embarrassingly infantile; it is akin to demanding that the Sun stop rising in the east because you got sunburn.
As any parent will tell you, raising a child is a Sisyphean task requiring a Herculean effort, but it is worth it as study after study shows. Growing up in a nuclear family is, contrary to the anti-family left, not an albatross but an advantage in terms of mental, emotional, physical, and social health, as well as education achievement and income level.
What all children need are parents who love, comfort, protect, and guide them. And what these delusional anti-family advocates need is a reality check… and a swift kick in the ass. I’d be happy to deliver both.
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by Tyler DurdenSunday, Dec 20, 2020 – 8:12
