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In Washington, China is a four-letter word and the excuse for everything

Posted by M. C. on May 3, 2023

Lawmakers have introduced nearly 275 measures this session, while bureaucrats are busy using the CCP to justify ballooning budgets.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C. ): They are centralized; we are decentralized. They are closed; we are open. They suppress free speech and human dignity; we embrace it.”  

Say What?

In Washington, China is a four-letter word and the excuse for everything

Written by
Blaise Malley

The 118th Congress has been underway for about three months, and at least one thing is already clear — across both parties, many committees, and a whole host of issues touching virtually all aspects of American life — China is the hottest issue on the Hill right now.

The first hearings of the session are often indicative of overarching priorities for the upcoming term. In 2023, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Financial Services Committee, and the House subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, part of the Judiciary committee, all held their initial hearings on some aspect of strategic competition with China. Within a week of their swearing-in, a large majority of members voted to establish the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, to much media fanfare.

Since then, subcommittees in HFAC, as well as Homeland Security, Coronavirus, Ways and Means, and Oversight committees have followed suit, in one way or another, in raising the China specter. 

Not surprisingly, many of these hearings have been full of fear-mongering, depicting the Chinese Communist Party as an existential threat rather than actually grappling with the genuine challenges and legitimate concerns now facing the U.S.-China relationship.

“China is not an ally or a strategic partner. They are our competitor and pose the single greatest threat to America’s global standing,” charged Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C. ) during the Financial Services committee’s first hearing. “The juxtaposition between the United States and China could not be more clear. They are centralized; we are decentralized. They are closed; we are open. They suppress free speech and human dignity; we embrace it.”  

The chairman of the subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), declared during his hearing that  “America’s national security is at risk because of China’s government’s quest to achieve superiority using both internal and externally gotten technology. They will use both legal and illegal means in order to gain technology.” 

Other hearings have veered off course from their official agendas into unrelated attacks on Beijing, as when Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) — during a hearing on PRC influence in the Indian Ocean — wondered, in a reference to China’s treatment of Uyghurs and ambivalence towards the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, “how effective have we been in letting the Muslim populations from Indonesia to Egypt know what China is doing and making them pay a price?” None of the witnesses felt they had sufficient expertise to answer this question. 

A search of the congressional record shows that in the first three months of the 118th Congress, lawmakers have introduced 273 bills or amendments that contain some variation of the word “China.” The terms  “CCP,” “PRC,” “Beijing,” or “Taiwan” add a handful more. This marks a significant uptick in China-related legislation in recent Congresses. This session’s total is already more than any congressional session before the 114th (2015-16). Since then, the number has increased from 288 in the 115th (2017-2018) to 627 in the 116th (2019-2020) to 1,323 in the 117th Congress (2021-2022). 

Like the recent congressional hearings, these bills touch on almost every aspect of American life. 

At a time of intense partisan polarization, bashing China is one issue on which both parties can’t get enough. Republicans sense that China’s rise — and the supposed American decline that accompanies it — serves as a useful political weapon against President Joe Biden. 

“The second thing that’s happening, and that’s more concerning for me,” Michael Brenes, Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute, told Responsible Statecraft, “is that the Biden administration is pursuing a policy where it believes the China threat can be served to revive or renew American democracy and American foreign policy, in a post war on terror era.” Meaning, he added, that everything from domestic renewal to industrial policy to foreign policymaking is being justified on that basis. 

As a result, heads of various government agencies have made cases for increasing their budgets based on the need to combat the China threat. Testifying in front of the House Appropriations Committee in late April, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that bureau agents were outnumbered “at least 50 to 1” by Chinese hackers looking to attack critical U.S. infrastructure. 

See the rest here

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Mandatory Mask Theater Returns, CDC Announces Long Term Extension for Biden Transporation Mask Mandate, No Expiration Date, Planes, Trains and Busses

Posted by M. C. on May 5, 2022

The Covidians who define themselves by their adherence to the dictates of the U.S. government, will be happy with this position from the CDC today. They worship at the altar of COVID science and use masks as an expression of their sanctimonious feeling of superiority.  

Mandatory Mask Theater Returns, CDC Announces Long Term Extension for Biden Transporation Mask Mandate, No Expiration Date, Planes, Trains and Busses

 Sundance

Previously a federal judge overturned the federal mask mandate for transportation, thereby allowing travelers to make their own choices.  The DOJ has appealed that decision after the CDC said it wanted the mask mandate to remain in place.  The status of that litigation is unknown.

Today, the CDC has announced a semi-permanent extension of the federal transportation mask mandate with no expiration date noted. [Announcement Here] That means all travelers on airplanes, trains, busses and ridesharing will be required to wear facemasks again, including inside the terminals and operational hubs of those transportation nodes, pending the outcome of the DOJ appeal to the federal court.

CDC Announcement – “At this time, CDC recommends that everyone aged 2 and older – including passengers and workers – properly wear a well-fitting mask or respirator over the nose and mouth in indoor areas of public transportation (such as airplanes, trains, etc.) and transportation hubs (such as airports, stations, etc.).

[…] This public health recommendation is based on the currently available data, including an understanding of domestic and global epidemiology, circulating variants and their impact on disease severity and vaccine effectiveness, current trends in COVID-19 Community Levels within the United States, and projections of COVID-19 trends in the coming months.

[…]  “CDC continues to recommend that all people—passengers and workers, alike—properly wear a well-fitting mask or respirator in indoor public transportation conveyances and transportation hubs to provide protection for themselves and other travelers in these high volume, mixed population settings. […] Additionally, it is important for all of us to protect not only ourselves, but also to be considerate of others at increased risk for severe COVID-19 and those who are not yet able to be vaccinated. Wearing a mask in indoor public transportation settings will provide protection for the individual and the community.”  ~ Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director

If the Biden administration lose the court appeal to reinstitute the mask mandate, this announcement by the CDC would appear to be moot, they couldn’t enforce it.  However, if the Biden administration is successful in their appeal, the mandatory mask wearing returns.

Put another way….. If the Biden administration lose the appeal, the people wearing masks will be the COVID worshippers.  If the Biden administration win their appeal we all have to wear them.

The mandate created by Joe Biden did not have legal structure.  It was a dictatorial fiat that exceeded the capacity of the executive branch to create.  U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle found the CDC exceeded its statutory authority with the mask mandate and violated the rules that guide CDC regulations.   {LINK} After Joe Biden arbitrarily announced the federal transportation mandate, the CDC triggered enforcement of the mask mandate without any required time for public feedback on a new regulation.

Congress could easily write a law authorizing mechanisms for the CDC and TSA to use in enforcement of a federal Transportation mask mandate; but they won’t – because the public doesn’t support it.  However, the Biden administration doesn’t care about majority public opinion, they are fine-tuned to push virtue signaling as a political strategy.

The White House is very committed to all their mandates around COVID-19, the mask mandate is no different.  From the perspective of the professional political left, the theater of forced mask wearing represents the visible power and authority of government to rule the lives of the irrelevant proles.

Any pesky legal rulings, that seek to reduce or remove the power of government, are viewed by the left as arbitrary and insignificant efforts to block their almighty power of government.  They can choose to wear a mask if they want, but that’s not really the issue behind the mask mandate.  The true power of the left is in the ability to force everyone to comply to their whims regardless of individual freedom.

The Covidians who define themselves by their adherence to the dictates of the U.S. government, will be happy with this position from the CDC today. They worship at the altar of COVID science and use masks as an expression of their sanctimonious feeling of superiority.  However, in an election year where the overwhelming majority of the American people have had enough of this political science, this CDC position may fuel an even more angry response.

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You will NEVER be “fully vaccinated” – OffGuardian

Posted by M. C. on December 16, 2021

It’s time everyone realised they are chasing an intentionally impossible goal that will be pushed back over the horizon, forever.

https://off-guardian.org/2021/12/14/you-will-never-be-fully-vaccinated/

Kit Knightly

Yesterday, in a statement to Parliament on the UK’s planned “vaccine passport”, Health Secretary Sajid Javid admitted the NHS Pass would require three shots for you to be considered “fully vaccinated”.

“Once all adults have had a reasonable chance to get their booster jab, we intend to change this exemption to require a booster dose,”

While many of us predicted this would be the case, it is the first time any British politician has actually said it out loud, and in front of parliament too.

This incredibly cynical “evolving definition” of “fully vaccinated” is not a new phenomenon, and is not isolated to the UK either.

Israel changed their definition of “fully vaccinated” to include the booster months ago. New Zealand’s ministry of health is “considering” doing the same, as is Australia.

The EU isn’t far behind either, with proposals in place to make travel dependent on having a third dose.

The US hasn’t formally adopted a new definition yet, but you’d have to be blind not to see the signs. Just yesterday the LA Times headlined:

Should the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ be changed to include a booster shot?

An article on Kaiser Health News asks the same thing.

Tony Fauci is quoted in the Independent as saying it’s only a matter of time before the definition is updated:

“It’s going to be a matter of when, not if” getting a booster shot will be considered being “fully vaccinated,” Dr Fauci said.

Opinion pieces are already appearing asking “is it safe to hangout with the unboosted”?

(This headline was so unpopular, the Atlantic changed it only a couple of hours after it was published, and even the archived version appears to have been scrubbed).

All in all it seems pretty clear that, by the time 2022 rolls around, most of the Western world will require three shots in order to qualify as “fully vaccinated”.

It’s also clear that this won’t stop at three. Already, just last week, Pfizer were claiming they may need to “move up the timeline” for a fourth vaccine dose.

This change is being blamed on Omicron, with articles warning the “new variant” can “hit” the vaccinated. Fortune reports:

Omicron is making scientists redefine what it means to be ‘fully vaccinated’ against COVID

So, the third (and maybe fourth) doses are (allegedly) for Omicron…but that model can extend to perpetuity. In order to go to five, six or seven they’ll only need to “discover” more “new variants”.

It will just keep going and going.

But there is good news in all this, every time the powers-that-shouldn’t-be change the rules in the middle of the game, it’s a chance to knock people out of their media-induced hypnosis.

There are promising signs that millions of already-vaccinated will reject the booster. We can build on that.

So tell your single and double jabbed friends, try to open their eyes to the path they are starting down.

They may consider themselves “fully vaccinated”, but the government doesn’t, and never will.

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“It’s all for your own good” – OffGuardian

Posted by M. C. on August 30, 2021

And so, in the name of “togetherness”, they are banning all people who are not vaccinated, including all children under 12 years of age who cannot, alas, be legally vaccinated yet. Not even people with a negative Covid test will be allowed entry to the concerts: only the “vaxxed” ones, with their proper certificates. Still, even they will have to endure masks for the whole duration of the spectacle. It’s not clear if also the musicians have to wear masks – I suppose at least the flute players will be exempted.

https://off-guardian.org/2021/08/29/its-all-for-your-own-good/

TE Creus

One of the most annoying aspects of the current measures supposedly created “against the pandemic” that we have been subjected for almost two years now is the insistence that everything is done “for our own good”, as if governments and big companies were strict but caring parents, and we were just unruly or disobedient children who don’t really know what they need.

It brings to mind CS Lewis’ warning about that most oppressive of tyrannies, “a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims.”

Now, I cannot tell for sure if the vaccines, the lockdowns, the travel restrictions and the masks work or not. My feeling is that they don’t, or at least, not in the way we are being told, but that’s not the issue. The question is why are we being treated like stupid children who cannot simply choose, but have to take a “jab” and then get “green passes” to travel or work or enter any establishment.

Apparently, governments and big corporations worldwide are worried about our “health”.

But are they, really?

Like monomaniacs, they seem to be worried exclusively about Covid.

Not about the incredible amount of mental health issues and the alarming increase of teenage suicides during the various “lockdowns”.

Not about people, like my elderly neighbours, who could not see their family (who live in another country) for over two years and are suffering with solitude.

Not for the people who, afraid of contracting Covid, didn’t go to the hospital to treat other conditions and died.

Not for the people who died or got sick because of side effects of the vaccines.

No, it’s just “Covid”. And even that doesn’t seem to be their main worry. As long as they get their “vaccine passports” and their “tracking apps” and their “cashless society”, they don’t really care if you get the disease or not.

When did this wave of fake concern started? Ok, governments were probably always in the business of being annoying busybodies – “I’m from the government and I am here to help” was a scary sentence since who knows how long. But companies for decades were mostly concerned with selling their product, not with lecturing us.

However, at the peak of BLM riots, I received dozens of emails from big companies assuring me that, to them, “blacks lives mattered”. In Pride Month, the same companies assured me that they were fighting for transgender rights to use whichever bathroom they wanted. I never asked nor cared what’s their position on those issues, just that they make a good product that I can use.

Now, the same companies send me emails about masks and vaccination and passes. Because, see, they are worried about my health.

Unfortunately, it’s not just governments and big companies. Almost every institution in the culture and the arts is also kowtowing (either by government decrees or to keep being funded, I don’t know) to this literal “new world order”.

For instance, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra now has very strict regulations for entry. They tell us that they want to create “an environment in which we all may confidently discover what it means to be together again.”

And so, in the name of “togetherness”, they are banning all people who are not vaccinated, including all children under 12 years of age who cannot, alas, be legally vaccinated yet. Not even people with a negative Covid test will be allowed entry to the concerts: only the “vaxxed” ones, with their proper certificates. Still, even they will have to endure masks for the whole duration of the spectacle. It’s not clear if also the musicians have to wear masks – I suppose at least the flute players will be exempted.

And yet, despite all those draconian rules who really seem to take out all of the fun of the process (and in this case it might really better to just stay home and watch a video streaming online), “these protocols do not offer absolute protection against contracting COVID-19” and the spectators must “voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19.”

Note also that those showing any possible symptoms might not be allowed entry, vaccine or not. (I wonder if anyone who coughs during one of the breaks will be forcefully ejected.)

This is just one example among many of the ludicrous and merciless “new normal” that we are subject to in the name of our health.

But remember, “it’s all for your own good”.

TE Creus is a writer, translator and filmmaker. He is the author of “Our Pets and Us: The Evolution of a Relationship” and the collection of short stories “The Sphere”. He’s the editor of Contrarium.

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The Approaching Storm – OffGuardian

Posted by M. C. on July 16, 2021

As I noted in my previous column, our societies have been torn apart. We’re living in two mutually hostile “realities,” a state which cannot continue indefinitely. The problem for us (i.e., the Unvaccinated) is, we probably constitute somewhere around 20 to 25 percent of the population, so we are massively outnumbered by New Normals. The problem for the New Normals is, we probably constitute somewhere around 20 to 25 percent of the population, which is way too many people to imprison or otherwise remove from society.

https://off-guardian.org/2021/07/15/the-approaching-storm/

CJ Hopkins

So, it looks like GloboCap isn’t going to be happy until they have fomented the widespread social unrest — or de facto global civil war — that they need as a pretext to lock in the new pathologized totalitarianism and remake whatever remains of society into a global pseudo-medicalized police state, or that appears to where we’re headed currently. We appear to be heading there at breakneck speed.

I don’t have a crystal ball or anything, but I’m expecting things to get rather ugly this Autumn, and probably even uglier in the foreseeable future.

Yes, friends, a storm is coming. It has been coming for the last 16 months. And GloboCap is steering right into it.

I, and many others like me, have been tracking its relentless advance like a self-appointed International Pathologized-Totalitarian Hurricane Center (you know, like the one in Miami, except all the meteorologists are “conspiracy theorists”). We have documented all the propaganda, the lies, the manipulation of statistics, the abrogation of constitutional rights, the New Normal goon squads, the corporate censorship, and all the rest of the roll-out of the new official ideology and the totalitarian measures deployed to enforce it.

Our efforts have not been in vain, but they have not been successful enough to change the course events are now taking … a course of events that has always been clear, a course that every totalitarian movement needs to take to get where it’s going. You can’t remake entire societies into quasi-totalitarian systems without civil unrest, chaos, rioting, war, or some other form of cataclysm.

Brainwashing the masses is all fine and good, but, at some point, you need to goad the people who are resisting your new totalitarian “reality” into getting unruly, so you can crack down on them, and transform them into official enemies, which appears to be what is happening currently.

GloboCap is dialing up the totalitarianism, and they are rubbing it in our faces.

Here in New Normal Germany, prominent health officials are openly barking out Goebbelsian slogans like “NO FREEDOM FOR THE UNVACCINATED!” and “THE UNVACCINATED ARE A DANGER TO SOCIETY!”

All over Europe, including the UK, where “Freedom Day” is fast approaching, pseudo-medical social-segregation systems are being implemented.

In France, Greece, and many other countries, people who refuse to be “vaccinated” are being stripped of their jobs and otherwise punished.

In the USA, where the Unvaccinated are also being segregated, New Normal goon squads are going door-to-door, bullying “vaccine hesitant” families into conforming to the new official ideology.

And so on … I’m tired of citing the facts. They do not make the slightest difference to the vast majority of New Normals, anyway. As I’ve noted in several previous columns, these people have surrendered their rationality, and have been subsumed into a totalitarian movement, which has become their perceptual and social “reality,” which their “sanity” now depends upon defending, so the facts mean absolutely nothing to them.

And you already know the facts.

Yes, you. Us. The others. The Unvaccinated. The “Covid deniers.” You don’t really think any hardcore New Normals have made it this far into this column, do you? They haven’t. If they stumbled into it on the Internet and accidentally started to read it, their brains switched off in the opening paragraph…literally, neurologically, switched off.

They recognized it as a threat to their “reality” and instantly erased it from their consciousness, or they reported it to the proper authorities, perhaps the FBI, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, or Facebook, or some other global corporation.

This is what it has come to, folks … people are reporting other people’s “thoughtcrimes” to global corporations and the law enforcement agencies of “democratic” governments in the hopes of destroying or damaging their lives, or, at the very least, getting them censored, or otherwise erased from public view.

As I noted in my previous column, our societies have been torn apart. We’re living in two mutually hostile “realities,” a state which cannot continue indefinitely. The problem for us (i.e., the Unvaccinated) is, we probably constitute somewhere around 20 to 25 percent of the population, so we are massively outnumbered by New Normals. The problem for the New Normals is, we probably constitute somewhere around 20 to 25 percent of the population, which is way too many people to imprison or otherwise remove from society.

Thus, their plan is to make our lives as miserable as possible, to segregate us, stigmatize us, demonize us, bully, and harrass us, and pressure us to conform at every turn.

They are not going to put us on the trains to the camps. GloboCap is not the Nazis. They need to maintain the simulation of democracy.

So, they need to transform us into an underclass of “anti-social conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxer disinformationists,” “white-supremacist election-result deniers,” “potentially violent domestic extremists,” and whatever other epithets they come up with, so that we can be painted as dangerously unhinged freaks and cast out of society in a way that makes it appear that we have cast out ourselves.

This process is already well underway, and it’s only going to get more intense, which will inevitably lead to social unrest. The hardcore “Unvaccinated” are not going to go quietly. Again, this isn’t Nazi Germany. There are too many of us who are already resisting. They can segregate us, ban us from travelling, blackout our protests, censor us, deplatform us, cancel our bank accounts, and otherwise harass us, but they cannot forcibly disappear us.

So, they are going to keep goading us until we lose it. We have demonstrated incredible discipline so far, but eventually, we’re going to run out patience. It’s going to get messy. People will get hurt.

Which, of course, is exactly what GloboCap wants. Nothing will make them happier than if we turn ourselves into the “violent extremists” they have been conjuring into existence for the last five years. They desperately need us to become those “extremists” before we “embolden” too many others with our “disinformation,” “vaccine hesitancy,” “election result denial,” and general distaste for the whole global-capitalist ideological program.

Unfortunately, they are probably going to get their wish.

What we need is an organized, global campaign of classic, non-violent civil disobedience, but they are not going to give us time to organize that. They are going to keep the pressure on, and crank up the pace, and the official propaganda, and the absurdity, and the confusion, and the ever-changing rules, and the mass hysteria, and the blatant lies, until we start flipping out in restaurants, and in pubs, and schools, and on public transportation, and segregated New Normal establishments start getting nocturnally vandalized, or worse, and other forms of “direct action” are taken.

At which point, game over, because they will have won. We will be the “extremists” they warned themselves about, and they’ll be able to do whatever they want with us, and our former (now New Normal) friends will applaud, or just look away in silence.

Or…I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe some New Normals are still reading this essay, and can still, at this late stage, regain their senses. Maybe we can still avoid the storm, and the full implementation of “New Normal Reality.” I know, I’m probably a hopeless idealist, but let me tell you a quick anecdote before I let you go.

I’ve been kind of nudging, or politely badgering, Glenn Greenwald, who I respect, and have always respected, to grow a pair and at least speak out against the totalitarian features of the New Normal movement. Glenn is totally on board with the official Covid narrative, and has made it clear that he has no interest in using his investigative-journalism skills to investigate that official narrative.

Despite that, I have continued to nudge him, and politely prod him, and otherwise urge him, to maybe post a few critical words, or raise a few investigative-journalist questions, about the most flagrant official propaganda campaign in the history of official propaganda campaigns and the blatantly totalitarian actions of governments all over the world.

For example, I posted this on Twitter recently.

15 months into the New Normal, as government officials openly bark out spittle-flecked, Goebbelsian slogans like “THERE IS NO FREEDOM FOR THE UNVACCINATED!” and “THE UNVACCINATED ARE A DANGER TO SOCIETY!”, the silence from certain quarters is deafening. pic.twitter.com/bNuZ5np1Ny

— Consent Factory (@consent_factory) July 12, 2021

Shortly thereafter — and I’m sure this was just a coincidence, because Glenn doesn’t follow the Consent Factory — he tweeted this bit of New Normal blasphemy:

The UK is one of the most vaccinated countries on earth. 70% have at least one dose. More than half have both. The CDC says vaccinated people need not wear masks.

Why do experts who keep insisting the vaccine works demand people act as if it doesn’t? Why ignore CDC advice? https://t.co/aBjeXpWZjh

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 12, 2021

So, apparently, it is, in fact, still possible for people who believe the official Covid narrative as if it were the Word of God to speak out against some aspect of it, or just politely question the logic of it, or otherwise stop behaving like a bunch of mindlessly obedient “Good Germans” as a new iteration of totalitarianism is rolled out right in front of their eyes.

Yes, I know. I’m clutching at straws, but I have this crazy faith in people. On top of which, I’m getting old, so I am not looking forward to the street-fighting part of this as much as I would have 30 or 40 years ago.

Oh, and, I almost forgot, to all my friends in the New Normal UK … have a lovely Freedom Day!

CJ Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. Volumes I and II of his Consent Factory Essays are published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.

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The Pandemic Led To The Biggest Drop In U.S. Life Expectancy Since WWII, Study Finds : Coronavirus Updates : NPR

Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2021

NPR screams “racism” when their own article screams “lockdown” and “isolationism”.

What is a “simulated estimate”? A “government guess”? A step below a “simulated fact”? Oh wait…it is a joke.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/23/1009611699/the-pandemic-led-to-the-biggest-drop-in-u-s-life-expectancy-since-ww-ii-study-fi

Allison Aubrey - 2015 square

Allison Aubrey

A new study estimates that life expectancy in the U.S. decreased by nearly two years between 2018 and 2020, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And the declines were most pronounced among minority groups, including Black and Hispanic people.

In 2018, average life expectancy in the U.S. was about 79 years (78.7). It declined to about 77 years (76.9) by the end of 2020, according to a new study published in the British Medical Journal.

“We have not seen a decrease like this since World War II. It’s a horrific decrease in life expectancy,” said Steven Woolf of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and an author of the study released on Wednesday. (The study is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and includes simulated estimates for 2020.)

Beyond the more than 600,000 deaths in the U.S. directly from the coronavirus, other factors play into the decreased longevity, including “disruptions in health care, disruptions in chronic disease management, and behavioral health crisis, where people struggling with addiction disorders or depression might not have gotten the help that they needed,” Woolf said.

The lack of access to care and other pandemic-related disruptions hit some Americans much harder than others. And it’s been well documented that the death rate for Black Americans was twice as high compared with white Americans.

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WHO’s Chief Scientist Served with Legal Notice for Disinformation and Suppression of Evidence – OffGuardian

Posted by M. C. on June 11, 2021

It is interesting to note that the content of several web links to news articles and reports included in the notice served upon Dr Swaminathan, which was visible before issuing the notice, has either been removed or deleted.

It seems that the vaccine manufacturers and many governments are desperate to protect their pro-vaccine agenda and will attempt to censor information and news regarding the efficacy of Ivermectin.

https://off-guardian.org/2021/06/09/whos-chief-scientist-served-with-legal-notice-for-disinformation-and-suppression-of-evidence/

Colin Todhunter

On 25 May 2021, the Indian Bar Association (IBA) served a 51-page legal notice on Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), for:

[H]er act of spreading disinformation and misguiding the people of India, in order to fulfil her agenda.”

The Mumbai-based IBA is an association of lawyers who strive to bring transparency and accountability to the Indian justice system. It is actively involved in the dissemination of legal knowledge and provides guidance and support to advocates and ordinary people in their fight for justice.

The legal notice says Dr Swaminathan has been:

Running a disinformation campaign against Ivermectin by deliberate suppression of effectiveness of drug Ivermectin as prophylaxis and for treatment of COVID-19, despite the existence of large amounts of clinical data compiled and presented by esteemed, highly qualified, experienced medical doctors and scientists,”

And:

Issuing statements in social media and mainstream media, thereby influencing the public against the use of Ivermectin and attacking the credibility of acclaimed bodies/institutes like ICMR and AIIMS, Delhi, which have included ‘Ivermectin’ in the ‘National Guidelines for COVID-19 management’.”

The IBA states that legal action is being taken against Dr Swaminathan in order to stop her from causing further damage to the lives of citizens of India.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO Chief Scientist

The notice is based on the research and clinical trials carried out by the ‘Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’ (FLCCC) and the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD) Panel. These organisations have presented an enormous amount of data that strengthen the case for recommending Ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

The IBA says that Dr Swaminathan has ignored these studies and reports and has deliberately suppressed the data regarding the effectiveness of Ivermectin, with an intent to dissuade the people of India from using it.

However, two key medical bodies, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi, have refused to accept her stand and have retained the recommendation for Ivermectin, under a ‘May Do’ category, for patients with mild symptoms and those in home isolation, as stated in ‘The National Guidelines for COVID-19 management’.

It is interesting to note that the content of several web links to news articles and reports included in the notice served upon Dr Swaminathan, which was visible before issuing the notice, has either been removed or deleted.

It seems that the vaccine manufacturers and many governments are desperate to protect their pro-vaccine agenda and will attempt to censor information and news regarding the efficacy of Ivermectin.

The legal notice can be read in full on the website of the India Bar Association.
Colin Todhunter is an independent journalist who writes on development, environmental issues, politics, food and agriculture. In August 2018 he was named as one of 400 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models by Transcend Media Services, in recognition of his journalism.

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“No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Unvaxxed” – OffGuardian

Posted by M. C. on May 22, 2021

When they said ‘there were no plans for ‘discriminatory’ Covid vaccine passports’, they were quietly funding at least eight different vaccine passport schemes since last year.

https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/21/no-irish-no-blacks-no-dogs-no-unvaxxed/

Dustin Broadbery

The government is pressing ahead with its Vaccine Passport and plans for a two-tier society are afoot. The effrontery of those leading the charge beggar’s belief.

When they said ‘there were no plans for ‘discriminatory’ Covid vaccine passports’, they were quietly funding at least eight different vaccine passport schemes since last year.

And that’s just the half of it. We are midway through a Europe-wide feasibility study for the development of a common vaccine passport, launched by the European Commission in 2018.

They would have you believe – they were caught with their trousers down, their policies are proportionate to the emergency as it unfolds, and at all times they operate according to a system of informed consent.

But hang on a minute. Since the onset of SARS-CoV-2, they have played the most astonishing game of deception and manipulation. Cooking the books, fiddling the tills and distorted their official numbers.

They have deliberately plunged society into two camps – skeptics and adherents, compliant and non-conformists.

Last year established the mood for pettifogging anyone questioning the narrative, while those refusing to comply were branded narcissists and psychopaths or denounced as ‘Covid deniers’ – the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier.

This government has polarised the nation on a scale never before attempted, legitimising a particular brand of prejudice and enmity not seen in Europe since the days of the Third Reich. And once the NHS App becomes your ticket to freedom on Monday, they will finally have means to weed out and punish dissidence while rewarding blind faith in authority. No matter how injurious their compliance is to society at large, the silent majority have lost their moral compass.

But it must be understood – this principle of divide and rule is as old as the hills. It was not so long ago that signs hung in the windows of establishments in Britain that read: ‘No dogs, No Irish, No blacks’. The difference today is that it won’t be the colour of your skin, your class, gender or sexual orientation that will condemn you, it will be something far more virulent – your ideology.

That this crucial point has been entirely missed by the chattering classes is astonishing. And despite the most flagrant attempts to marginalise large segments of society, identitarians, the woke brigade and other erstwhile defenders of the most marginalised remain largely unphased. Unless it is to flap their arms in the air over higher rates of vaccine hesitancy amongst ethnic minorities. But the rest of us can go to hell.

Who cares about anyone not from a protected social group, right?

In this bizarre parochial moral imperative, discrimination is only frowned upon if you’re discriminating against someone’s authorised and rubber-stamped marks of distinction, whereas discrimination, of and by itself, is entirely permissible.

These crowd-pleasers would defend their moral high ground by telling you “the unvaccinated are selfishly putting others’ lives at risk”, or that “mask refuseniks are superspreaders”. But hold on a minute. All of this is pure conjecture which, like everything else under the post-COVID sun, has been founded on speculative science and policies pulled straight from the magician’s hat.

Other than taking the government on its word, where is the actual evidence of asymptomatic transmission? Where is the evidence of mask efficacy?

In fact, can someone point me to a single risk assessment for any of these high-risk interventions? But to deny someone entry into an establishment, to prevent them from travelling, shopping, or worse, stepping foot outside of their own bolthole is no moot point. These are very real and tangible forms of discrimination, for no other reason than you personally disagree with their choices.

These people have clearly made peace with the fact that membership to society is now the exception rather than the rule. They labour under some neotribal sense of entitlement – if you’re not with us, you’re against us. Like their neolithic ancestors they take refuge in the herd from an unseen predator threatening their hand to mouth existences. Positioning themselves in the upper echelons of this looming two-tier system, with others equally desperate to get their lives back and ready to submit to whatever ephemeral demands are made of them in return for one coveted free pass to re-enter polite society.

While the rest of us – who will not be spoken for, bribed or coerced – will risk excommunication from the social-balm in defence of our principles.

This loose association of the poorest and most marginalised, conscientious objectors, lockdown skeptics, and anyone with a shred of faith in their god-given sovereignty of being or bodily autonomy will wage a personal crusade of civil disobedience against the tyranny de jour, as Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King did before them. For them, braver men have endured far worse for much less.

But what the first group fails to realise is that they are doing the unofficial bidding of another group – the well-healed members of our political establishment to whom the rules do not apply. Who are protected by more exemptions than the rest of us are governed by regulations. And who, at the onset of the pandemic, were not caught with their pants down, as the general population was.

As this group spoke of herd immunity, they quietly struck a £119 million COVID advertising and propaganda deal with one of the world’s biggest marketing companies. Going on to become the UK’s biggest advertiser in 2020.

Just a day before the first lockdown, their Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) began work on the most criminal propaganda campaign in British history:

Extract from UK gov’t report “Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures”, read the whole thing here.

See the rest here

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How the CDC is manipulating data to prop-up “vaccine effectiveness” – OffGuardian

Posted by M. C. on May 21, 2021

The CDC is demonstrating the beauty of having a “disease” that can appear or disappear depending on how you measure it.

To be clear: If these new policies had been the global approach to “Covid” since December 2019, there would never have been a pandemic at all.

https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/18/how-the-cdc-is-manipulating-data-to-prop-up-vaccine-effectiveness/

Kit Knightly

The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) is altering its practices of data logging and testing for “Covid19” in order to make it seem the experimental gene-therapy “vaccines” are effective at preventing the alleged disease.

They made no secret of this, announcing the policy changes on their website in late April/early May, (though naturally without admitting the fairly obvious motivation behind the change).

The trick is in their reporting of what they call “breakthrough infections” – that is people who are fully “vaccinated” against Sars-Cov-2 infection, but get infected anyway.

Essentially, Covid19 has long been shown – to those willing to pay attention – to be an entirely created pandemic narrative built on two key factors:

  1. False-postive tests. The unreliable PCR test can be manipulated into reporting a high number of false-positives by altering the cycle threshold (CT value)
  2. Inflated Case-count. The incredibly broad definition of “Covid case”, used all over the world, lists anyone who receives a positive test as a “Covid19 case”, even if they never experienced any symptoms.

Without these two policies, there would never have been an appreciable pandemic at all, and now the CDC has enacted two policy changes which means they no longer apply to vaccinated people.

Firstly, they are lowering their CT value when testing samples from suspected “breakthrough infections”.

From the CDC’s instructions for state health authorities on handling “possible breakthrough infections” (uploaded to their website in late April):

For cases with a known RT-PCR cycle threshold (Ct) value, submit only specimens with Ct value ≤28 to CDC for sequencing. (Sequencing is not feasible with higher Ct values.)

Throughout the pandemic, CT values in excess of 35 have been the norm, with labs around the world going into the 40s.

Essentially labs were running as many cycles as necessary to achieve a positive result, despite experts warning that this was pointless (even Fauci himself said anything over 35 cycles is meaningless).

But NOW, and only for fully vaccinated people, the CDC will only accept samples achieved from 28 cycles or fewer. That can only be a deliberate decision in order to decrease the number of “breakthrough infections” being officially recorded.

Secondly, asymptomatic or mild infections will no longer be recorded as “covid cases”.

That’s right. Even if a sample collected at the low CT value of 28 can be sequenced into the virus alleged to cause Covid19, the CDC will no longer be keeping records of breakthrough infections that don’t result in hospitalisation or death.

From their website:

As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance. Previous case counts, which were last updated on April 26, 2021, are available for reference only and will not be updated moving forward.

Just like that, being asymptomatic – or having only minor symptoms – will no longer count as a “Covid case” but only if you’ve been vaccinated.

The CDC has put new policies in place which effectively created a tiered system of diagnosis. Meaning, from now on, unvaccinated people will find it much easier to be diagnosed with Covid19 than vaccinated people.

Consider…

Person A has not been vaccinated. They test positive for Covid using a PCR test at 40 cycles and, despite having no symptoms, they are officially a “covid case”.

Person B has been vaccinated. They test positive at 28 cycles, and spend six weeks bedridden with a high fever. Because they never went into a hospital and didn’t die they are NOT a Covid case.

Person C, who was also vaccinated, did die. After weeks in hospital with a high fever and respiratory problems. Only their positive PCR test was 29 cycles, so they’re not officially a Covid case either.

The CDC is demonstrating the beauty of having a “disease” that can appear or disappear depending on how you measure it.

To be clear: If these new policies had been the global approach to “Covid” since December 2019, there would never have been a pandemic at all.

If you apply them only to the vaccinated, but keep the old rules for the unvaccinated, the only possible result can be that the official records show “Covid” is much more prevalent among the latter than the former.

This is a policy designed to continuously inflate one number, and systematically minimise the other.

What is that if not an obvious and deliberate act of deception?

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Coronavirus Infection Leads to Immunity

Posted by M. C. on May 19, 2021

Congressman Thomas Massie

Vaccines don’t contain antibodies or T-cells. They provoke your body into providing a natural immune response — the natural immune response that a prior COVID infection also elicits.

To deny the effectiveness of the natural immune response is to deny the basis of the vaccine.

I’m not advocating anyone should seek to get infected with COVID instead of taking the vaccine. But I find it appalling that CDC, President Joe Biden, & House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are denying science and treating people like idiots by refusing to acknowledge the efficacy of a natural immune response.

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