Where nearly 1 percent of the entire population just tested positive for Covid.
Not in a month. Or a week. In one day.
You read that right.
On Saturday, Israel had 84,000 new infections, the equivalent of almost 3 million in the United States. Infections in Israel have risen unthinkably fast since late December. They’re are up 100-fold in one month, driven by the collapse of booster protection and the arrival of the Omicron variant.
Israel is not alone. Denmark reported 42,000 cases yesterday, equal to almost 2.5 million in the United States. France, the second-largest country in Europe, reported the American equivalent of about 12 million new infections in the last week. Australia had a tremendous surge in cases earlier this month, though it seems to be subsiding for now.
Daily new infections in Israel:
These countries have very different population demographics and previous exposure to Covid. They even have very different weather; it is summer in Australia.
Much of the discussion from eco-Marxists and Facebook pseudointellectuals is counterproductive. They mistakenly blame free markets for a problem created by the government’s failure to ensure property rights. These free market critics often attack the market mechanisms that serve as the cures to our environmental woes. A proper solution to the current ecological situation is not possible without the inclusion of an unhampered price system and a legal system that upholds and protects property rights.
In recent years, Marxist theories of environmentalism have plagued online discourse and seeped their way into the public policy realm. Politicians then utilize these theories when formulating new legislation. While sometimes intimidating, these theories suffer significant flaws. Eco-Marxist theory, such as the “Treadmill of Production,” generally states two main criticisms of capitalism.
First, withdrawals from the environment. According to the eco-Marxists, production under modern capitalism requires a vast amount of material inputs. The energy/raw materials required to produce mass amounts of consumer goods leads to extreme resource depletion and waste; this is an insufficient criticism.
This is, at its core, an issue of scarcity. To the capitalist, it’s no surprise that using a resource diminishes its quantity supplied, but recognition of scarcity is a new concept for the Marxists. Scarcity is an obvious issue, but less obvious is how scarcity would be managed in a Marxist utopia absent of prices. The answer for a market economy is simple, the price system.
The first thing to be said about this is that on the free market, regardless of the stringency of supply, there is never any “shortage”, that is, there is never a condition where a purchaser cannot find supplies available at the market price. On the free market, there is always enough supply available to satisfy demand. The clearing mechanism is fluctuations in price. If, for example, there is an orange blight, and the supply of oranges declines, there is then an increasing scarcity of oranges, and the scarcity, is “rationed” voluntarily to the purchasers by the uncoerced rise in price, a rise sufficient to equalize supply and demand.
Resource depletion in a market economy has an easy fix and is ultimately a nonissue. The rising price of a good discourages the use of said good and prevents the good from running out. Rising prices for a good also creates a profit opportunity for entrepreneurs to find alternatives for that good. In contrast, a socialist economy has no bidding for privately owned resources, no prices, and as a result there is no clearing mechanism or scarcity indicator. See Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.
The second criticism is additions to the environment. The eco-Marxists say modern production is more reliant on chemicals and energy to create consumer goods; chemical and energy intensive production leads to large additions to the environment—i.e., pollution.
What the eco-Marxists misunderstand is that pollution isn’t a problem of production; pollution is a problem of garbage disposal. As Walter Block puts it: “At its root all pollution is garbage disposal in one form or another.” There is nothing inherently wrong with production resulting in excess materials or chemicals, the core issue is how to dispose of the excess.
If pollution is a problem of garbage disposal and not a problem of production itself, then what is to blame? The legal system. The current legal system has failed to protect property rights; instead, the law protects polluters and trespassers. Governments that once allowed individuals to take polluters to court in nuisance suits now auction off permission to pollute. Courts of law historically protected land owners from factory pollutants and other forms of trespass. This legal precedent changed in the 1830s and ’40s, when legal systems ceased protecting property rights and allowed pollution for the “greater good.”
Polluters can now dump fertilizer and chemicals into rivers with permission from the Environmental Protection Agency. Pollutants can be pumped into the air as long as polluters line the pockets of the EPA’s Clean Air Markets Division and receive a pollution permit. If the federal government’s many regulatory agencies have failed and succumbed to special interests, what makes left-leaning environmentalists and progressive public policy makers think that new environmental protection agencies will fare any differently?
Much of the discussion from eco-Marxists and Facebook pseudointellectuals is counterproductive. They mistakenly blame free markets for a problem created by the government’s failure to ensure property rights. These free market critics often attack the market mechanisms that serve as the cures to our environmental woes. A proper solution to the current ecological situation is not possible without the inclusion of an unhampered price system and a legal system that upholds and protects property rights. Author:
As an alternative for those who would rather listen ad-free, sign up for a premium subscription to receive the following: *All JBP Podcast episodes ad-free *Monthly Ask-Me-Anything episodes (and the ability to ask questions) *Presale access to events *Premium, detailed show notes for future episodes Sign up here: https://jordanbpeterson.supercast.com This episode was recorded on September 15th, 2021. Chloé Valdary and I discuss The Theory of Enchantment, her personal brand of compassionate anti-racism. Chloé has been featured in Psychology Today and the NY Times. Her work with Theory of Enchantment attempts to bring compassion to diversity training and fight bigotry with love. We covered a range of topics surrounding her practice, structural racism in the US, the civil rights movement, the best way to criticize one another, the power of Truth, white fragility, and what one could expect from her (rather unique) diversity seminars. Find more from Chloé @cvaldary https://twitter.com/cvaldary & check out her program at https://theoryofenchantment.com
Reconciliation with far-gone elements of the “Left” is a losing cause – time for the remaining independent, undomesticated elements of civilization to de-rig with our own “Great Reset” parallel society.
However, we didn’t rigorously assess why the populist Right, and not the Left, poses an existential threat to the ruling class.
The “establishment” references the conglomeration of dominant interest groups that sits atop the political food chain.
In a past era (in the Western context, before the original Industrial Revolution), the establishment was a landed aristocracy in collusion with the Church and militaries that ruled nation-states.
In the 21st century iteration of feudalism, the ruling class is a consortium of multinational offshore corporate elite.
Theoretically, regardless of who occupies power, any social group outside of the establishment is a latent threat – hence the oppressive apparatuses of state throughout history from the Red Guards of the Mao era to the Stasi of East Germany.
In a rough 99% vs. 1% breakdown, if the vast majority or the “ruled” rose up against the tiny minority of “rulers,” their days perched atop the social hierarchy would be finished.
But, if the 99% can be chopped up into all manner of sub-groups – either along pre-existing cultural, racial, or political fault lines or artificial ones engineered by the state – and then turned against one another, the status quo can be maintained.
Politically, the population at large (outsiders of the establishment) in the United States is divided into two large groups: “Right” and “Left.”
Here is a brief breakdown of why, in the current social configuration, the Left serves as the enforcement arm of the state to suppress the grassroots Right, which is correctly viewed as the only faction that is a threat to the power structure.
#1: International vs. National Orientation
First, it’s imperative to understand that the United States, along with the rest of the West, is now under the effective control of a multinational corporate elite.
Piece by piece, sovereignty over decision-making is chipped away at the national level and handed over to international governing institutions like the UN, World Bank, World Economic Forum, WHO, et al.
We’ve explored this concept in greater detail in several pieces:
Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell is given credit for popularizing the “Pottery Barn” rule of foreign policy. Though he denies using that exact phrase, in arguing against what became the disastrous 2003 US attack on Iraq Powell made the point that, as in Pottery Barn, “if you break it, you own it.”
Bush and his neocons – ironically with the help of Colin Powell himself – did indeed break Iraq and the American people as a result “owned” Iraq for the subsequent 22 years (and counting). It was an idiotic war and, as the late former NSA chief Gen. Bill Odom predicted, turned out to be “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.”
Attacking and destroying Iraq – and executing its leader – not only had no value in any conceivable manner to the United States, it had negative value. In taking responsibility for Iraq’s future, the US government obligated the American people to pick up the tab for a million ransacked Pottery Barns.
There was no way out. Only constant maneuvering and manipulation to desperately demonstrate the impossible – that the move had any value or even made any sense.
So it is with Ukraine. In 2014 the Obama/Biden Administration managed to finish what Bush’s neocons started a decade before. With the US-backed overthrow of the Ukrainian government that year, the US came to “own” what no one in their right mind would ever seek: an economic basket case of a country with a political/business class whose corruption is the stuff of legend.
Rather than admit what a colossal blunder the whole thing had been, the US foreign policy establishment doubled down.
“Oh, this might be a neat tool to overthrow our own election: let’s pretend Trump is Putin’s agent!”
In fact Trump was impeached because a certain Col. Alexander Vindman – himself of Ukrainian origin and doing the bidding of a Ukrainian government installed by Washington – solemnly testified to Adam Schiff and his Democrat colleagues in charge of the House that Trump was clearly Putin’s puppet because his lack of enthusiasm for continuing to “own” Ukraine went against “the Inter-Agency Consensus.”
We “own” Ukraine and there is no way back – at least if the US foreign policy establishment has its way.
That is why our hapless State Department today continues to peddle the fiction that Russia is about to invade – and thus “own” – Ukraine. US foreign policy is one of projection: accuse your rivals of doing what you yourself are doing. No sane country would want to “own” Ukraine. Except the Beltway Think Tank class, thoroughly infused with military-industrial complex money.
That is why the US government, though its Embassy in Kiev, is bragging about the arrival of $200 million in lethal aid, all pointed directly at Russia.
That is why the US State Department is maintaining the fiction that Russia is about to launch a ground war to occupy Ukraine by dramatically announcing an “evacuation” of all “non-essential personnel” from its Embassy in Kiev.
It’s just too bad that we don’t share the opinion of who are really “non-essential” State Department personnel in Kiev: the last person out could be asked to turn off the lights.
By overthrowing an elected government in Kiev in 2014, the US government disenfranchised millions of voters in eastern Ukraine who voted for the overthrown president. Those voters unsurprisingly came to view the US-installed regime as illegitimate and sought self-rule under the concept of self-determination. As ethnic Russians, many of these successfully sought Russian passports.
Russia has been clear for a long time about Ukraine: it will not allow an armed invasion of eastern Ukraine that would result in the deaths of thousands of Russian citizens. Were the shoe on the other foot, the US – and any country – could be expected to react the same way.
The US is nearly the last country on earth that still holds to the WWII-era concept of war for territorial gain. Russia wants to “own” Ukraine like most people want to “own” a 2003 Saturn. That is why despite neocon/neo-liberal hype, magnified by the lock-step US media, Russia is not about to invade Ukraine.
This fantasy is being pushed by those who desperately need to continue to gin up enthusiasm for a thoroughly idiotic and counterproductive imperial enterprise.
Biden while vice president sowed the regime change winds in Ukraine. Now his inept Administration will reap the whirlwind of that continuing train wreck and eventual dissolution of the country. No matter what Antony Blinken peddles to the contrary.
Even the comedian Zelensky knows this is a really bad joke.
The U.S. is giving Ukraine an additional $200 million in military aid that was approved by the Biden administration in December, a senior State Department official confirmed with reporters on Wednesday. The additional military aid was announced while Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Kyiv.
The official didn’t detail what military equipment would make up the new aid package. Since 2014, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with over $2.5 billion in military aid. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. started giving Ukraine lethal weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles and armed patrol boats.
Earlier reports said the Biden administration was considering giving Ukraine more stinger missiles, mortars, and more Javelin missiles. Another plan under consideration is giving Ukraine military aid that was meant for the now-defunct U.S.-backed Afghan government that would include Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters.
With the constant U.S. claims of a Russian invasion, Washington is eager to give Ukraine weapons. On top of the $200 million, the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act authorizes another $300 million for military aid to Ukraine. A group of Senate Democrats recently introduced a bill that would authorize an additional $500 million for Ukraine if the president determines Russia is being hostile towards its neighbor.
This article was originally featured at Antiwar.com
Of one thing only can we be certain: it’s past time to be done with the Very Long War and the misguided aspirations to global primacy that inspired it. Only if Americans abandon their fealty to the idea of American Exceptionalism and the militarism that has sustained it, might it be possible to conclude that the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan served some faintly useful purpose.
In the long and storied history of the United States Army, many young officers have served in many war zones. Few, I suspect, were as sublimely ignorant as I was in the summer of 1970 upon my arrival at Cam Ranh Bay in the Republic of Vietnam.
Granted, during the years of schooling that preceded my deployment there, I had amassed all sorts of facts, some of them at least marginally relevant to the matter at hand. Yet despite the earnest efforts of some excellent teachers, I had managed to avoid acquiring anything that could be dignified with the term education. Now, however haltingly, that began to change. A year later, when my tour of duty ended, I carried home from Vietnam the barest inkling of a question: How had this massive cockup occurred and what did it signify?
HBO host Bill Maher and writer Bari Weiss received a somewhat-surprising rapturous round of applause from the mostly liberal audience during Friday’s show after they dropped truth-bomb after truth-bomb into the pool of dissonance that remains among blinkered leftists unable to think for themselves about COVID risks and see beyond the “I must zealously support anything and everything that Fauci or Biden say or I am a Trumper” mindset.Ahead of the Friday night show, Maher told Deadline magazine that “I feel like COVID is still the dominate issue of our lives right now and it should not be anymore.”
“I’m over COVID,” Maher continued.“I was never scared of it. I was always scared of the reaction to it, and as this has played out that only proved to be more true for me. I’m sure many people feel different, but that’s me. It was never that virulent a threat, I thought, to people who were in good health.”
The HBO host said the “vulnerable” should be protected, but the virus was mostly a disease that impacted the elderly and people who have comorbidities. He noted a stat from the CDC about how “78% of the people who died or went to the hospital were obese.”
“So, the fact that America, the medical establishment, never even attempted to get people to live a healthier lifestyle as a response to this pandemic is a giant scandal to me,” the host said explained. “The people who didn’t do that have blood on their hands. There’s no other way to put it.”
But Maher was not done as he went after the incessant and blinkered vaccinate-or-die policy being mandated (via legislation, regulation, or moral pressure) on every man, woman, and child (and hamster) in America…
“I mean, we’re in a very different place with COVID than we were just when I was on the air last time, and that is the vaccines, we know, do not prevent you from either transmitting it or getting the disease,” Maher continued.“They just prevent you from dying, which is a great part of it, let’s not undercount that. But if they don’t prevent you from transmitting it and they don’t prevent you from getting it why are we still treating this disease the way we always have? And what the fuck is the use of a booster shot? Because I will never get a booster shot.”
“They don’t know a lot about anything,” Maher responded when asked whether he thought:
“Dr. Anthony Fauci or the medical establishment really know what they are doing.”
And all of that was before the show.Maher was joined by former NYT Editor Bari Weiss whose outspoken frankness and unafraid honesty has made her substack ‘Common Sense’ among the most-read.The two dared to discuss the all-too-obvious absurdity of a two-tiered system that allows the “haves” to go to a restaurant and enjoy themselves unmasked while in the same space the help are masked and look like they are from the television program ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’
“The Democrats are supposed to be the party of the little guy,” Weiss told Maher.”You know what the Democrats are now comfortable with, or seemingly comfortable with? A two-tiered system in which the haves get to go into a restaurant, laugh with their friends for hours and the people serving them are masked and wearing gloves.Or they get to walk, as AOC did, at the Met Gala while in the background the staff looked like they were in The Handmaid’s Tale. I mean, this is, this is a look that is unbelievably detrimental to them.“
“And jobs,” Maher chimed in.
“The people with the ‘consulting’ jobs or whatever bullshit they do, they get to stay at home and order the food out and do shit by Zoom. It is the working class people that are breathing in their shitty, stale air all day.”
“That is going to create a class resentment,” Maher continued.
“It looks the liberals are always suggesting sacrifices they themselves don’t have to take part in.”
Weiss concluded by clarifying what many who look asconce at the ongoing ’emergency’ COVID measures think: “…this is going to be remembered by the younger generation as a catastrophic moral crime,” noting the huge surge in self-harm and suicides that the loneliness and isolation of these abusive authoritarian policies has created.
The most impressive thing about Bari Weiss on last night’s Bill Maher is the wild applause after she finishes here. After two years the tides are turning, even for the left leaning people in this country when it comes to covid. Watch this: pic.twitter.com/8DIH3zTibM
Given the rousing round of applause after this carpet-bombing of truth, we suspect the country is quietly growing tired of the repeated message from on-high and the leftist-state restrictions that two years in have been proved (and in many cases shown specifically by CDC data) to be utterly useless.
The incident took place at a middle school located in Lansdale in Montgomery County about 30 miles north of Philadelphia.
Reading a statement at a Jan. 20, 2022, meeting of the North Penn Board of School Directors, president Tina Stoll said the teacher’s conduct was “inappropriate” and an “isolated incident.”
“First and foremost, I would like to extend an apology on behalf of the district and the Board of School Directors to the student who was involved and to his family.
“They did not ask for this incident to occur, nor do they deserve the negative attention that it has brought,” Stoll said. “This board can report with total confidence that, upon learning of this incident, the district immediately took steps to investigate the matter and prevent any similar acts from taking place in the future.
“Accountability is paramount to this board, as is communication and responsiveness with the family of the student involved–their input helps to guide the district’s actions–we will not let social media influence the facts established by an objective investigation,” she added.
Families protest any potential mask mandates before the Hillsborough County Schools Board meeting held at the district office on July 27, 2021 in Tampa, Florida
Stoll said district officials have been “fully cooperating” with local law enforcement in its investigation of the mask incident at Pennfield Middle School.
The photo was posted Jan. 17 on social media showing a special education teacher using tape to secure a face mask to the unidentified student’s face. The image immediately went viral, prompting the board to address the issue at the Jan. 20 meeting.
“Although it has been determined that this was an isolated incident and that no malice was intended, the actions of the employee were unacceptable, no matter the context.
“The board and administration view this as a serious matter and the board is confident that the administration is addressing it as such,” Stoll said.
“Because all personnel and student matters are confidential, and due to the role in which the board may be required to serve with respect to impartiality and the due process rights of students and employees, we are bound by law to not comment or provide any further information regarding this specific incident.”
“To be clear, the actions of this employee were inappropriate,” she said.
The board then read aloud a letter from the boy’s mother, who said no permission was given to post the image online.
“How this has evolved is exactly what I wanted to avoid,” the mother wrote, describing the bad publicity as a “scene from my worst nightmare.”
During the public comment portion a number of parents spoke out against the teacher’s actions and the board’s handling of the investigation.
“The negative attention is on you,” said Emily Johnson, who believes it was not an “isolated incident.”
“These are your decisions. I don’t understand why you’re doing this to our children,” Johnson said.
“It’s complete child abuse,” another parent told the board. “You are public servants. You are digging your own graves.”
Parents also drew attention to other controversial issues facing the district, including pornographic literature found in school libraries, white “privilege walks,” and a district board that doesn’t take input from parents seriously.
“This isn’t about public safety—it’s about control,” said another parent. “It’s about controlling our children’s minds.”
Yanni Lambros, who owns a coffee shop in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, asked the board, “Are you following the science or are you following a narrative?”
“Children are taught that they are walking vectors of death,” he said. “When does it end?”
In September 2021, a substitute teacher at Reedom Elementary School in Las Vegas allegedly taped masks to the faces of pupils. The Clark County School District called it an “isolated incident.”
by Tyler Durden
