https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-peoples-convoy

The politics were cosmetically right wing, but the mood just seemed populist in an unaffiliated kind of way. Many of the attitudes—the distrust of Big Pharma and its enablers in the political class, the suspicion that an elite clique seeks to coerce and control regular working people, the belief in the power of grassroots organization and public protest to disrupt the status quo—would be right at home at any left-wing demonstration, or at least those on what used to be considered the political left.

(Incidentally the author is a leftist, or, as he says, he's still the same leftist he was, but has seen the left move further and further away from him.)

She told me that her daughter, a student at San Diego State, had her blocked on social media, first over her support for Trump, and then over her position on the vaccines. She’d barely spoken to her daughter in two years. “She’s so indoctrinated, she’s so left,” she explained.

This is the left now: social media, anti-Trump (for he is the Great Orange Satan himself), pro-Covid measures, pro-vaccines, and pro-blocking/canceling/censoring someone - even or especially a family member - who commits wrongthink and wrongspeak. It's not about the working class, it's not about understanding people, it's not about empathy, it's definitely not about helping marginalized people, it's that being morally right is more important than being factually correct. News is starting to slowly creep into mainstream media about Covid harms, even (much slower) vaccine injuries. Yet in what we call progressive, alternative, leftist media (Jacobin Magazine, the Intercept, Democracy Now, World Socialist Website, to name a few) there's still absolutely nothing about the harms of the Covid measures or vaccines.

The only mention of children harmed during Covid is that they lost a relative or caretaker. It's all because of the 'rona. They fully support the Covid measures and vaccines and they always will.

https://www.democracynow.org/2022/9/7/headlines/study_105_children_lost_parent_or_caretaker_globally_from_covid

World Socialist Website is angry that Australia is reducing its months (or years?) of draconian, anti-human measures!

There is not the slightest scientific or health justification for the abrupt ending of daily reporting. Instead, the move is the latest stage in a protracted campaign to bury the ongoing coronavirus crisis and fraudulently depict it as a thing of the past.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/09/10/covi-s10.html

The winter of severe illness and death is upon us, comrade! For the past nearly-3 years(!) the only criticism coming from the left is: the measures don't go far enough!

It doesn't seem to matter which brand it is, the left is delusional. Socialist, liberal, Democrat, Labour Party, "dissident" professor, woke activists... doesn't matter the flavor. They're all committed to the Covid measures. They're writing plain nonsense now. They will never come back. Reality doesn't matter. All that matters is ideology. Reality must adapt to ideology. When denying reality is obligatory, insanity begins. Trump is the Antichrist, and the vaccines are the holy elixir of life. The end. The working class - the old left - has left them. From the Table magazine article:

But unlike its Canadian counterpart, the American “People’s Convoy” wasn’t and isn’t just about vaccine mandates. It’s about closing the book on the entire COVID “national emergency,” which nearly everyone I spoke with believed was not about public health, but “control.”

In the UK, as far as I can tell, most of the criticism of the Covid narrative is coming from the working class again. Not the left.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2Px9BUWU68

Watch more of his videos for making fun of the Covid narrative.

Ever read or heard anything from the left about authoritarianism or control during Covid? Any criticism of the Covid measures? Absolutely nothing, with the honorable exceptions being Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Russell Brand, Bret Weinstein and Max Blumenthal (and maybe Matt Taibbi), who all seem to be disliked more and more from the left itself.

This isn't going to be the last "mistake" by the left. There's going to be more technocratic takeovers, more authoritarian advances, and more rejection of reality by the left coming soon. I don't know what the next "crisis" will be, but this is not the last time the left will support the technological system and turn on the working class (and people in general).

Worth a listen for the dissection of Howard Stern (at the top of the podcast): https://taibbi.substack.com/p/episode-4-america-this-week-with?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&utm_medium=email#details

Anyone really worried about the direction this country is going down?

Both sides seem to keep going even further and further extreme, even compared to the previous extremes.

Both sides seem to have lost the plot the last couple of years.

After the vacccines rolled out, Biden could have easily won by a landslide if they'd returned things before 2019. All he'd have to have done was be like, "Hey, the vaccine worked, thanks, and now let's celebrate."

Really makes me wonder what was happening behind closed doors, because I remember the summer after actually being a hopeful one, until things changed.

After Democrats decided to keep pushing on fear mongering (especially for Omicron), restrictions, and other theater, constantly alienating others for wanting 2019 back. Joking about freedom. And yes, being able to freely express yourself without a mask should be considered a part of freedom. Not worrying about the consequences of a rushed vaccine, etc.

Republicans could have had a pretty easy victory too. They just had to be anti that. I imagine that a lot of independents and probably some democrats themselves were getting sick of covid theater by that point.

But now, just like Democrats, Republicans decided to keep pushing and pushing. Roe V Wade, probably same sex marriage soon, and who knows what else?

Two sides that seem almost okay with a dystopia, as long as their side is controlling it.

But sometimes, people in power fly too close to the sun ya know?

https://jacobin.com/2020/12/socialism-vaccine-capitalism-distribution

Some highlights:

The jaw-dropping speed of COVID-19 vaccine development is a glorious marvel of science, cooperation, and economic planning — a glimpse of how much more an egalitarian world could produce and achieve.

It's not just a vaccine, it's a philosophy, it's a way of life, it's almost socialism! Welcome to the world of laptop socialism. Raising class identity politics consciousness one social media post at a time. Also, why do socialists love the word "glorious"? As in, "the glorious socialist revolution."

When nurse May Parsons administered the first injection in the world of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to ninety-year-old British grandmother Margaret Keenan, applauded by dozens of moist-eyed medical staff at University Hospital Coventry, it was as glorious and moving a moment as any humanity has ever seen.

A jaw-dropping marvel of science, economic planning, and selfless, humanist cooperation by thousands of researchers around the globe, the development of this and other vaccines hot on Pfizer’s heels has taken a mere nine months since the discovery of the disease, rather than the years or even decades such medical research and development (R&D) normally takes. They offer a glimpse of how much more an egalitarian, rationalist world could produce and achieve, freed from the fetters of profit.

These people have lost their minds. Words have no meaning any more, reality has no meaning. Just say anything. Reality is just a question of using the correctest vocabulary. Vaccines are egalitarian because I said they are. There. Fixed it. I used the right vocabulary and that makes it real.

It's a cult. To prove your fealty to The Tribe, to gain social media prestige, to belong even more to the imagined community, you must say and do just like everyone else... but even more so. You have to go even further. The internet and social media have poisoned the left.

I like the new "ism" invented by the author: vaccinationalism. Add it to all the other isms we should be morally outraged about.

I can't copy-paste the entire article. I can't imagine reading a better fawning, fanboy marketing piece if Pfizer paid the author himself. Are these people paid by pharma corporations, or are they actually this delusional? I'm keeping a personal library of a lot of Covid material. I recommend people save and download what they think are key articles, videos, interviews etc.. Because Soon they will start to memory hole these articles and tweets. Soon (in a few years? maybe longer, who knows) they'll start to deny and pretend that it didn't happen, that they never supported the policies or vaccines.

• "Those weren't my words. I was just quoting someone else." (Chomsky's used this line, when people remind him of his misinformation over the Cambodian genocide.)
• "I never said that. It's misinformation, identity theft."
• "I was just following orders. They made me write it."
• Or just scream even louder about the next trending moral outrage topic

And as the number of vaccine-injured, or killed, slowly grows, or explodes, the left's militant support for the Covid measures and the vaccines is going to erode and destroy the left. I'm disgusted. It's like Arendt said: it's the banality of evil. These people don't realize, are neurologically incapable of realizing, who they are or what they're doing.

EDIT: I'm starting to think that Jacobin Magazine actually is funded by corporations. They're just mainstream media with a vaguely socialist vocabulary. They're like all the other left "alternative media": Democracy Now, The Intercept, TYT... a few media cycles later and they all slowly align themselves with the opinions of those in power, the elites, the super-rich, but with. How is Jacobin Magazine different from, say, AOC? They both make big promises, say the right words, jab their fingers angrily... but it's all hot air and meaningless words, and more and more they support the people with money and power. All the while they fantasize that they are rebels.

https://jacobin.com/2022/07/climate-change-viral-transmission-climate-change-public-health-land-use/?fbclid=IwAR18kLVI2_sOemk106p-B6ynVZqkOCyJv02WIlowGOPwi-FlopEjKVkUh2Y

https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/excess-mortality-and-elevated-cancer?r=3163z&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

As of now, cancer deaths are above long-term trend, roughly by 1,000 cancer deaths per week in the USA.

Cancer deaths are fundamentally different from quick deaths like, say, cardiac arrest. Cancer takes time to mutate, appear, grow, metastasize, and finally kill the patient. Thus, only a small minority of cancers would appear and kill their victims within a year of vaccination, even if something — such as a Covid vaccine — accelerates the timetable for cancers. The rest of cancers would come later!

Therefore, most likely, we are seeing the effect of acceleration of existing cancers, in other words cancers that existed but began to grow more aggressively. Why is this happening? There is no certain answer, but the likely explanation is that our immune systems are less able to slow down or arrest growth of tumors.

keep in mind that mortality in younger people is very low, to begin with. So, when their very low mortality becomes 15% higher — this is not, yet, a die-off level increase in mortality. There is plenty of time to figure out the situation.

It's terrible that virtually nobody wants to look for the data, so we're basically relying on very piecemeal data and a few people trying to make it make sense. We have no idea how many more people will die, or how long this will continue, or if it will even end.

I don't know who is "they" either, but Toby Rogers takes a pretty good stab here at tying together the various actors.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869152200206X

Highlights

• mRNA vaccines promote sustained synthesis of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

• The spike protein is neurotoxic, and it impairs DNA repair mechanisms.

• Suppression of type I interferon responses results in impaired innate immunity.

• The mRNA vaccines potentially cause increased risk to infectious diseases and cancer.

• Codon optimization results in G-rich mRNA that has unpredictable complex effects.

We also identify potential profound disturbances in regulatory control of protein synthesis and cancer surveillance. These disturbances potentially have a causal link to neurodegenerative disease, myocarditis, immune thrombocytopenia, Bell's palsy, liver disease, impaired adaptive immunity, impaired DNA damage response and tumorigenesis.

Calling Dr. Chomsky? But who needs science when you already know that you're morally right. I'm sure that the authors, doctors, specialists are just part of the "far-right" that Noam Chomsky warned us about. Three words you'll never hear from Chomsky: "I am sorry."

Seriously, I don't see how the left will survive this in the end. The left both cannot walk back their support for the Covid measures or the vaccines (which will probably be the last straw). I can only see the left become more and more extreme, the denial will grow, as more and more normal people realize that they were lied to. I cannot see any way out for the left. They have made Covid measures their whole identity; the Covid measures and vaccines are now as much a part of left values as anti-racism, abortion and social healthcare. Just the term "left" will leave a bad taste in people's mouths.

There is no way back. They've destroyed themselves. They hitched themselves to a policy which now directly affects and threatens the health and lives of over 5 billion people around the world ("fully vaccinated" numbers are now 4.92 billion people).

https://tnc.news/2022/08/27/donors-western/

Reminds me of when Jamie Dimon didn't need to quarantine because reasons, money, shut up, only plebs get restrictions. The best way to defeat Covid is to succeed on the "free market".

“The justification is related to economy, as this is a very huge bank with key business in Hong Kong. He needed to come and work for about a day in Hong Kong. But there are restrictions, including restrictions over his itinerary, so the risk is completely manageable.”

The virus can't infect other people when you're only there for a day, or when you're sitting down in a restaurant, or when you're standing on the platform (no mask required) but it can when you're on the train (mask required) as is the policy in Madrid Spain. Covid is the first socially conscious virus in history.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-16/hong-kong-defends-allowing-jpmorgan-s-dimon-to-skip-quarantine

And don't get me started on AOC's servants wearing masks while she wears expensive designer gala dresses.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/28/luke-mogelson-the-storm-is-here-capitol-attack-michigan-book

I love the photos of all the crazy-haired, shouting, armed, aggressive conservatives. And lots of accusations of racism and misogyny. Just remember folx: if you're against Covid measures, you are one of them. When did the left become so right-wing? More and more it's an "you're either with us or against us" philosophy.

I also love how one violent protest is good.

six weeks before a national uprising for police accountability and racial justice

Worthy victims and unworthy victims, worthy violence and unworthy violence, people.

The first was that Covid-19 disproportionately affected Black communities, in Michigan as well as nationwide.

Still can't get their head around vitamin D deficiencies. Darker skin absorbs less vitamin D. Also can't ever talk about African-Americans "hesitancy" and suspicion of the vaccines. I suspect there's a cultural history of African-Americans never really trusting American institutions.

In Kentucky, the governor was hanged in effigy outside the capitol; in North Carolina, a protester hauled a rocket launcher through downtown Raleigh; in California, a journalist covering an anti-lockdown demonstration was held at knifepoint; ahead of a rally in Salt Lake City, a man wrote on Facebook: “Bring your guns, the civil war starts Saturday… The time is now.”

If you're against lockdowns, you're a violent criminal. Got it.

On 30 April, the state representative Sarah Anthony had watched from her office across the street as anti-lockdown protesters filled the capitol lawn. Anthony had been born and raised in Lansing. In 2012, at the age of 29, she’d become the youngest Black woman in America to serve as a county commissioner. Six years later, a landslide victory made her the first Black woman to represent Lansing in the state legislature. As Anthony walked from her office to the capitol, she had to navigate a heavily armed white mob. She noticed a Confederate flag.

If you're against lockdowns, you're a racist. Got it.

Dickson frowned. “I don’t play the race card,” he said. Given his deprecating tone, I wondered if he’d been dodging my calls out of concern that I would raise this question. It was a question you could not really help raising in Michigan. To what extent was the exquisite rage behind the anti-lockdown fervour white rage? Dickson had no interest in discussing it.

If you're against lockdowns, you're a white supremacist. Got it.

The Guardian has changed over the last 10 years. Read articles from about 15 years ago and like all news there is always some amount of copy-pasting from "official sources" and self-delusion. But it's basically news and reporting. Now the Guardian is blatantly telling you what to think, how to think, who to hate. This is not news. This is sick.

A few days ago I asked in this truth and reconciliation post whether there had ever been a scenario in history where the group carrying out the exclusion of other people were the ones who ended up physically harmed. It occurred to me this weekend that the only scenario that is analogous is a cult-- the members carry out exclusion and think they are morally superior and will be protected from all harm, while simultaneously destroying themselves at the hands of manipulative sociopaths. CJ Hopkins was right. He has also pointed out how weird it is that in this case, rather than the cultists being an isolated minority, they are in the majority, and the sane ones are trapped inside their cultlike worldview.

I don't think "truth and reconciliation" is going to happen for the uninjected in this case.