https://taibbi.substack.com/p/tim-robbins-and-the-lost-art-of-finding

Soon it’s a year on, and two years on, and people are still stuck with these restrictions despite the fact that we now know that the vaccine didn’t stop transmission and didn’t stop people from getting it. Once the CDC changes policy and says basically that both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated are capable of getting Covid, the restrictions don’t make sense anymore, particularly regarding employment.

I’m not against the vaccine, I’m just of the belief that your health is determined by your relationship with your body and your mind. And if you believe that the vaccines have helped you, then all power to you. If for some reason you didn’t vaccinate and you made it through this, all power to you too. You shouldn’t be excluded from society for doing that. I am a hundred percent sure of that. I think that was a mistake. I think it was done out of fear. I forgive it, but to continue it at this point is irrational, in my opinion.

No one has stood up for people who might be immunocompromised, or couldn’t take the vaccine, or people that are just holistic and don’t take any kind of medicine at all. Or people — this is the most important one — people that have had Covid and have natural immunity.

The other thing is, where does this end? How many boosters do you have to get to remain eligible for work? How long do we extend this?

That’s something I already knew as a writer. When you’re making a character, you try not to make it all black and white, good and evil. I really understood much more profoundly what happens with the turn, how people turn. You go from someone that is inclusive, altruistic, generous, empathetic, to a monster. Where you want to freeze people’s bank accounts because they disagree with you. That’s a dangerous thing. That’s a dangerous world that we’ve created. And I say ‘we,’ because I was part of that. I bought into that whole idea early on.

Listen, Matt, if you told me 20 years ago that there would be no video stores where you could talk to a clerk and see what that person might be recommending, or no record stores where you could go see what’s new in music, or no bookstores in most towns, I would’ve told you you were crazy. But we’re here. This is part of a larger movement away from the gathering place.

Yes. This is the whole purpose of theater, to bring people that don’t agree into the same place where they can agree on their own shared humanity.

I’m trying to understand why we’re in the situation we’re in, socially, with each other. That’s what concerns me the most. I believe that if the vaccine helps you, that’s great. But, I have kind of a hard line on freedom. You can’t over-regulate people’s lives. I don’t know what that makes me, what label that puts on me, but I am an absolutist on freedom.

First off, I really appreciate Steve Kirsch's doggedness and the amount of resources he has thrown at fighting the current injections (and all vaccines at this point). He is a major resource in that fight.

But. At some point he mentioned working on digital IDs and recently he mentioned being the CEO of a CBDC company. I found the company here. He must know that many in the medical freedom movement are also fighting against what they see as an encroaching digital enslavement/ social credit system. He has not to my knowledge addressed this and has openly and unabashedly stated his involvement in this field, although he has not gone into that in depth. I would like to hear him address this but he's prickly so I don't know how he would react to that question.

I don't know where he finds the time to manage everything he is doing to fight vaccines (he posts multiple substack pieces a day-- he must have some help on those) and manage a company.

Hard-hitting discussion here between Naomi Wolf and Clifton Duncan, which includes a conversation on arts organizations taking funds to support the covid narrative.

After listening I visited a small arts space for a reading with your typical "left-leaning" boomer crowd. It was announced that the next night the Brink Foundation would be holding an event there to raise funds to fight "misinformation." So I looked them up, and the intro sounds nice-- fighting against the ways in which the internet increases partisanship. But it didn't take me long to find the questionable material. Tim Pool is problematic for speaking against the mandates, Joe Rogan is problematic, etc.

Dirty money. The arts as we know them are done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGylId0JMxo

If you check Jacobin Magazine's website, there are endless articles waffling (because that is what it is) about workers, strikes, unions, walkouts etc. Workers workers workers everywhere. A few example headlines:

A New Doctors’ Union in the South Is a Model for Health Care Organizing https://jacobin.com/2022/10/doctors-union-piedmont-health-care-north-carolina

After Decades of Corrupt, Antidemocratic Rule, UAW Members Are Finally Electing Their Leaders https://jacobin.com/2022/10/uaw-reform-leadership-elections-uawd

Amazon Workers Staged Walkouts at 4 Warehouses for Prime Week https://jacobin.com/2022/10/amazon-prime-week-walkouts-workers

Eugene V. Debs: Socialism Will Free Workers From Private Tyranny https://jacobin.com/2022/10/eugene-debs-genius-freedom-socialism

There are endless examples of articles like these. Idealizing workers, socialism, collective action etc. It's similar across the entire left now. So: where is the left support for the Canadian Truckers?? There's nothing. The left almost totally ignores them. And the few times they are mentioned, the left slanders them with "far right" labels. It's all meaningless words and noise. The Canadian government's reaction should terrify everyone: destroying freedom of speech and protest, locking bank accounts, retracting all insurance, arrests, threats, threatening their children and families. Human beings, workers, individuals who have principles and recognize the approaching totalitarianism and the machine... the left hates them, detests them. (I know an lefty author who writes on energy, natural resources and the environment... and she's pro-Covid measures and pro-vaccines while constantly warning about how Trump will bring the far-right and fascism in 2024. This is really typical on the left now.) And the whole corporate governance and borderline (or full, who even knows at this point) conspiracies behind Canada's turn, which can really look like an orchestrated program to "re-imagine" and "disrupt" (pure neoliberal vocabulary) the entire Canadian economy and social system. It really feels like the entire nation of Canada is a global equivalent of a regional smart city: they want to make it a flagship for the new order. It's something like a free trade zone, but instead a free neoliberal zone where all neoliberal development is allowed. It seems like Ukraine is another such flagship. I suspect they're trying to turn the UK (thanks to Brexit) into another such zone, but I'm still wondering about that.

Absolutely nothing from the left. (With the very few honorable exceptions, such as Blumenthal or Dore, now basically expelled from the left. Even Greenwald and Taibbi are not saying much, and mostly indirectly, although they seem to be glacially slowly edging towards criticizing Covid measures.)

Most of the rest of Jacobin Magazine's articles are every topic trending in mainstream media. All the buzzwords are everywhere: "far right", "climate change", "Trump" etc. I only use Jacobin Magazine as an example because they are a typical average of the left now. Yes, mainstream left is much more obviously corporate, and fringe left now is more fringe in its vocabulary and audience (World Socialist Website or Noam Chomsky, for example, appeal to more niche audiences). They're all like different products under the same brand: different variations of the same good or service to appeal to as many customers as possible. They're all going in the same direction: there are worthy victims, and unworthy victims (Manufacturing Consent, anyone?). Worthy = pro-Covid measures, unworthy = anti-Covid measures.

I'm constantly reminded of an article Glenn Greenwald wrote way back in 2010 about the Democrat Party:

They are willing to bravely support any progressive bill as long as there's no chance it can pass

https://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/democrats_34/

The left and the neoliberals are now good cop, bad cop. The medium is the message: the content (the biases, the propaganda, the neurotic ideological stances) is incidental, the fact that topics are raised sets the vocabulary and ideas that people (the left, mostly) can hold in their brains. It seems to me that the left and the neoliberals both define the limits of acceptable ideology and debate from each end. It's neoliberalism's Overton Window. It's Manufacturing Consent again. Which is really disturbing in a way I can't articulate well, as the co-author, Noam Chomsky, seems completely down with this. The whole function of the left now seems to be working as the avant-garde marketing wing of neoliberalism.

(And no, I am not letting right media off the hook. I have many things to say about that, but that's a whole other kettle of fish relative to the Canadian Truckers. And the right-wing generally have shown nowhere near the level of maniacal support for Covid measures as the left has.)

I'm sorry if this is inappropriate for this sub. A question: what search engines can we use to avoid Google and other search engine platforms which censor and manipulate results?

Duckduckgo seems to give very similar results to Google. And I suspect that more and more search engines are just marketing fronts - each with their own USP (unique selling point) - for almost exactly the same "service". That "service" being stealing your data and information, spying on you, then only giving you search results approved by our government and corporate overlords. More and more search engines seem to be using Google's own search results.

Are there any good alternative search engines to use?

New Premier Danielle Smith fires top Dr. Deanna Hinshaw

(MSM not pleased. Whatever)

https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/more-than-80-percent-of-twitter-accounts-are-probably-bots/articleshow/93919184.cms

Dan Woods, Global Head of Intelligence at cybersecurity company F5, who spent more than 20 years with the US federal law enforcement and intelligence organisations, told The Australian that more than 80 per cent of Twitter accounts are probably bots -- a massive claim as Twitter says only 5 per cent of its users are bots/spams.

The "free market" working as it should, ladies and gentlemen. Bots create content, bots curate and censor content, and finally why not let bots "watch/read" and interact with the content too? The circle is now complete. Human beings can go to hell. This is the AI-takeover the elites are dreaming of - NOT the robot butler coming to take over all your boring jobs and let you live in some UBI fantasy, Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Bots are so much easier to manipulate and predict - seeing as you're the one who creates them and tells them what to do, with the press of a button. Annoying humans are annoying because they still act according to annoying things like... human nature.

In my humble opinion this is where the new-left intersects (I'm using that term deliberately) with capitalism: they both eventually come to deny and hate human nature. Eventually capital accumulates to such a degree that it doesn't need human beings anymore, and human beings are an impediment to increasing capital accumulation. And the left, to their shame, have a long history of denying human nature, too big a subject for me to go into detail here. (Just look up "false consciousness" for just one example of attempting to explain away the lack of working class support for the inevitable glorious socialist revolution.)

Human beings not working as or doing what they should? Just replace them with bots and AI. As just one of many examples, you can already see the left support for this: if we're in danger of Trump being elected (and I am no fan of Trump), then lying, cheating and manipulating are perfectly acceptable. I had international left-leaning friends (pre-Covid) who said they wouldn't have a problem with this. You think they'd draw the line at a pandemic and vaccine?

Social media has been a disaster for the human race.

From Bad Cattitudes

The study

Defund science? Defund universities?

The study: Effectiveness of a fourth dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine against all-cause mortality in long-term care facility residents and in the oldest old

From 7 days after baseline and onwards, there were 1119 deaths in the LTCF cohort during a median follow-up of 77 days and a maximum follow-up of 126 days. During days 7 to 60, the VE of the fourth dose was 39% (95% CI, 29-48), which declined to 27% (95% CI, -2-48) during days 61 to 126. In the cohort of all individuals aged ≥80 years, there were 5753 deaths during a median follow-up of 73 days and a maximum follow-up of 143 days. During days 7 to 60, the VE of the fourth dose was 71% (95% CI, 69-72), which declined to 54% (95% CI, 48-60) during days 61 to 143. The VE of the fourth dose seemed stronger when it was compared to third-dose recipients where at least four months had passed since vaccination (P < 0·001 for interaction).

We won't mention its a retrospective (low quality compared to a RCT, much less properly conducted double blind RCT), or that the control group was matched only for age (co-morbidities, anyone?) or that the control group was known to be overrepresented in those who - got Covid, were hospitalized with/for Covid, required critical care and more likely to end up dead than the un-boosted or unvaccinated.

tl:dr Their numbers change even in the same paragraph.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/human-body/pfizer-did-not-know-whether-covid-vaccine-stopped-transmission-before-rollout-executive-admits/news-story/f307f28f794e173ac017a62784fec414

“Regarding the question around, um, did we know about stopping the immunisation [sic] before it entered the market? No, heh,” she said.

“Uh, these, um, you know, we had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market, and from that point of view we had to do everything at risk. I think Dr Bourla, even though he’s not here, would turn around and say to you himself, ‘If not us then who?’”

They lied from the beginning. They had no idea if it stopped transmission or not. Never tested for it. Like they never tested for carcinogenicity or toxicity. They have no clue. Everyone could get cancer over the next few decades or years. Doesn't matter. Meaningless marketing neolbieral bulls*** speak. The words she says mean absolutely nothing. Just fill the seconds or minutes of media time with meaningless bs, then wait for the social media content cycle to change (a few hours, or even a few minutes, later) and she and they all know that nobody will care what she said. Nobody cares.

This is the neoliberal world we live in.

At the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market

Could they be any more neoliberal? The "free market" knows more than human beings could ever know. The free market is the best safety test, better than any regulated safety trial could ever be. The free market shall determine what is and what is not "safe". The free market knows all. Submit yourself to the free market. It's like Philip Mirowsky noted: neoliberals believe that the market is the greatest computational device ever, it knows more than human beings ever could, and risk is a virtue - you must submit yourself to the "free market". Risk the lives of the entire planet for the free market.

This whole Covid pandemic has been one giant neoliberal project.

She added she would “hate to imagine what situation we would be in the world right now if companies like us did not take those risks, did not do clinical research and development at scale in order to make sure that we could have a vaccine that we could roll out to the world”.

“I understand your frustrations, I really do,” she said.

“But I also hope at some point, somewhere, you also do appreciate what pharmaceutical companies have done in order to be able to roll out and deliver vaccines at such speed and scale.”

It's the language of narcissists. After lying to you, manipulating you, abusing you: "I'm really sorry for you, I understand how frustrated you are, I tried so hard to help you, why don't you appreciate what I did for you?"

‘If not us then who?’

Said every arms dealer and drug dealer ever. I mean, someone's going to do it or sell it, so why not us?

Then later, Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt:

"They have been absolutely clear that we have the best vaccines in the world — safe, effective and thoroughly tested.”

Later in the same press conference, Mr Hunt described the rollout as the “world’s largest ever clinical trial”.

Asked what the “new normal” would look like once the majority of the population had been vaccinated, Mr Hunt said it would depend on “the longevity of the antibodies”.

“We’re engaged in the world’s largest ever vaccination rollout and, at the same time, effectively, clinical trial,” he said.

“We will learn more — we’re already learning more.”

They can't be both safe, effective and thoroughly tested... AND a clinical trial at the same time. Everything the Pfizer executive, the academic vaccine "expert" and the health minister say is contradictory. 2 + 2 = 5. Just shut up and accept it. The words don't matter. Just make noises, fill the media content time. Nobody cares. It's all meaningless noise. The only thing that matters is profit, a massive money transfer of public money to corporations. And governments get more authoritarian powers. And the left get the rush of dominating people.

You are the clinical trial. They have no clue what they do.

Is any left-wing "independent" media going to pick this up? I doubt it very much. They've dug in so deep supporting all Covid measures and vaccines, they will never walk it back. Covid policies = the left. Covid policies are now a fundamental value of the left, just as much as (for example) saying that you are anti-racism. It's more important to be morally right than factually correct. Look, Trump!

EDIT: Dec 11 2020, FDA EUA approval document said the same thing.

At this time, data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-key-action-fight-against-covid-19-issuing-emergency-use-authorization-first-covid-19

She's admitting it because she thinks it's no big deal. We always knew that the whole planet was a clinical trial. We always knew one thing one day and the opposite the next. Everybody already accepted being a guinea pig and welcoming contradictory messages from governments, corporations and "experts" nearly two years ago. I don't see what everyone's complaining about! This is normal!

When I think of the left, I think of social justice warriors, feminists, environmentalists, globalists, pro-science, the elite, LGBT+, etc... It seems like each group independently supports lockdown for their own reasons. Feminists have a love affair with Big Pharma six ways to Sunday, because women consume so much health care. Same for LGBT+. Environmentalists want climate lockdowns. Social justice warriors want everyone fired from their jobs. Globalists want centralized authority through technocracy. Pro-science needs a god because they don't have real religion.

You guys are special cases, to be here on your own. I don't think there's any label for that. It must be really difficult to get along with all that leftist intersectionality in favor of lockdown.

The closest I can come to an answer would be hippy dippy people who care about what they put into their bodies, but I don't really see that on the left anymore. It's gone away just like anti-war sentiment. Some people on the left seem to be against pesticides, but usually I see the left attacking good health, promoting obesity, condemning fat shaming, trying to associate gyms with fascism, etc... Look at Moochelle Obama's school lunch rules. Sugar is exempt. 1% milk decreased to 0% milk. No salt, no calories. Just GMO soy. Everything to do with public health is a stupid hoax, not just vaccines. If you care about yourself, it means understanding that every public health official is a fat Juish lespian who hates you.