For at least three or four years now, I have, together with my closest colleagues, been recognized as something of an authority of the ideology most of us just refer to now as "Wokeness." Spanning that time, certainly at least as far back as early 2018, I have frequently faced the challenging question of "how did this Woke stuff escape the university and go mainstream?" While we were doing the Grievance Studies Affair, in fact, we ended up in an epic argument about the issue that led to us giving a kind of quirky name to the difficulty we had in answering this question. We called it "crossing the Tim Pool Gap."

This challenge in communications gained this name for us in February of 2018, when Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose, Mike Nayna, Tim Pool, and I all met at Peter's house, rather by chance, to have a discussion about this exact topic. In a heated discussion that went on for hours, we hit a major impasse in which we could not satisfactorily convince Tim of our thesis, and neither could Tim convince us of his. Tim argued that activists, especially in media, were the primary agents of change in Wokifying everything. We insisted that, while this may be, there was a significant university component as well and, further, that it was the root of the activist mentality. "Ideas like 'hegemonic masculinity' didn't come out of the sky! They came out of academia!" I still remember Peter yelling in frustration. The thing is, Tim wasn't wrong, and neither were we (there's something like a revolving door of bad ideas between these groups, who all fancy themselves activists in the same causes). We were so alarmed and frustrated by our inability to communicate the university-to-culture pipeline (or lab leak, as it might better be understood) that we referred to this challenging comms problem ever after as a search for a way to bridge the Tim Pool Gap, or "TPGap," in our private communications.

This is a question that deserves an answer though, because when something this pernicious takes hold of the core of a culture, we have a duty to understand how it was able to do so, so that, whether our culture stands or falls by it, future societies will not so easily be threatened. As indicated by the existence of the Tim Pool Gap, though, the answer to that question is complex and probably deserves a book's length to get anything better than a very cursory treatment. Certainly, the roles played by the Internet (thus democratization of information), social media (thus decentralization of publishing and broadcasting), and other infrastructural changes are significant. They are also beyond my scope, and I recommend the reader consult Martin Gurri's admirable book The Revolt of the Public, if not works by Marshall McLuhan and even the postmodernist Jean Baudrillard, for insights in that regard. So too have intentional agents who funded or promoted Wokeness as a tool for facilitating their own agendas or for waging political warfare by turning the West simultaneously stupid and wholly against itself. That said, media and academia also both played a role, as we argued, and I would refer readers to Tim Pool's analysis of the former and Helen Pluckrose's analysis of the latter — though until someone (I know, I'm someone...) takes on the bear of Critical Pedagogy in sufficient detail, that latter domain will remain a bit mysterious. I will touch on that aspect here, but I will only touch.

French lawmakers have given their final support for a controversial "global security" law which has sparked widespread demonstrations.

The bill is centred on "Article 24", which will make it an offence to maliciously share images that identify police officers in operation by face or name.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said the law would protect police officers from online calls for violence. Police unions have also expressed their support for the measures.

But the legislation has been widely criticised by both humans rights and media organisations who say that it would curtail press freedom and lead to less police accountability.

Amid increasing concerns voiced by some scientists that climate change is fraught with dangerous implications for the Earth's natural ecosystem and the world economy, there may be other links to altering weather conditions that are no less threatening, claims a new study.

When extreme weather conditions manifest themselves in the form of droughts or excessive rainfall, it may be a sign of impending wars, claims new research.

As a team of scientists led by Santa Fe Institute External Professor Rajiv Sethi (Barnard College, Columbia University) and Tackseung Jun of Kyung Hee University in South Korea discovered the link as they pored over the oldest surviving document recording Korean history - the Samguk Sagi, or History of the Three Kingdoms.

Almost a quarter of registered Covid deaths were not caused by the virus, new official figures reveal.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows 23 per cent of coronavirus fatalities are now people who have died "with" the virus rather than from an infection.

This means the disease was not the primary cause of death recorded on death certificates, despite the person who died testing positive for Covid.

Other data also shows an increasingly positive picture of the state of the pandemic in Britain.

A report published last year by the WEF-Carnegie Cyber Policy Initiative calls for the merging of Wall Street banks, their regulators and intelligence agencies as necessary to confront an allegedly imminent cyber attack that will collapse the existing financial system.

In November 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace co-produced a report that warned that the global financial system was increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Advisors to the group that produced the report included representatives from the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street giants likes JP Morgan Chase and Silicon Valley behemoths like Amazon.

The ominous report was published just months after the World Economic Forum had conducted a simulation of that very event - a cyber attack that brings the global financial system to its knees - in partnership with Russia's largest bank, which is due to jumpstart that country's economic "digital transformation" with the launch of its own central bank-backed cryptocurrency.

More recently, last Tuesday, the largest information sharing organization of the financial industry, whose known members include Bank of America, Wells Fargo and CitiGroup, have again warned that nation-state hackers and cybercriminals were poised to work together to attack the global financial system in the short term. The CEO of this organization, known as the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), had previously advised the WEF-Carnegie report that had warned much the same.

For more than a decade Bill Gates has funneled millions of dollars into a scientifically mad scheme allegedly to study the possibility of "manmade global cooling." The project, led by a Harvard physicist, proposes to send satellites into the atmosphere in order to drop tons of chemicals in an attempt to block the sun. Now a strong resistance within Sweden has forced Gates & co. to abandon the planned Swedish satellite launch. This latest adventure in geoengineering by Gates shows what an unscientific enterprise the global warming charade is. As Gates no doubt well knows, in fact the Earth has slowly been cooling as we enter what some astrophysicists estimate could be several decades of global cooling caused by a Grand Solar Minimum cycle we entered in 2020.

On April 2 the Swedish Space Agency, announced that the program, the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), funded by Bill Gates, has "divided the scientific community" and will therefore not be carried out. SCoPEx was a scheme funded for several years by personal funds from Gates to test the feasibility of dimming the sun via manmade geoengineering.

The plan is to drop sulphate aerosolor calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere from high altitude balloons in a madcap scheme to try blocking the sun and thereby "prevent " global warming. The Swedish agency decided to cancel the experiment because of a major opposition from not only the scientific and environmentalist community, but also indigenous Swedish Saame or Laplander people who are reindeer herdsmen and feared the particles could cause severe or unknown environmental pollution to their herds. Notably, the Saami Council warned that the Gates experiment "essentially attempts to mimic volcanic eruptions by continuously spewing the sky with sun-dimming particles."

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 global pandemic, many issues have arisen that run contrary to historical precedents and known and practiced public health principles of the last century. This article discusses some of these issues: assumptions made without evidence, the incorrect case definition, PCR diagnostic test problems, the impact of these two factors on morbidity and mortality estimates, school closures, facemasks, lockdowns and their effects on children.

Assumptions about SARS-CoV-2 made without evidence - the creation of panic

Panic has been spread among the general population since the beginning of the pandemic, based on the idea of "asymptomatic transmission". This idea was strongly influenced by a case report in Germany, in which an infection was attributed to contact with an asymptomatic person (1). Further investigation revealed that this person had actually been sick and had been suppressing her symptoms with medication (2). The original misleading paper was never rectified. Based on this, and limited case reports from China, the "experts" began to promote the idea that this virus behaves differently to other respiratory viruses. All prior knowledge indicates that epidemics are not driven by asymptomatic individuals (3, 4). However, the decision-makers in this epidemic determined that this does not apply to COVID-19 and every single individual we encounter could be an infectious person capable of killing us. This is contrary to conventional reasoning in medicine and public health. Decisions have always been based on prior knowledge, until there is compelling evidence to disprove what we thought we knew. Articles in the literature have found that secondary transmission by asymptomatic individuals is very low (5, 6, 7). In a cohort study with a very large sample size, no one became infected among 1,174 contacts of 300 asymptomatic subjects who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (8).

Another assumption promoted by the "experts" in this epidemic is the idea that the general population would be immunologically "naive" to this virus and thus 100% susceptible to develop the disease. This is again not consistent with previous knowledge about human immunity to viral agents. Cross-immunity is a well-known fact. It is not reasonable to assume that the entire population is immunologically susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, when in fact it is very likely that many individuals have at least partial immunity to the virus due to prior infection with similar viruses or agents with similar antigenic properties. There are several studies showing that individuals have immunity to SARS-CoV-2 by T-Cell mediated mechanisms (9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

Editors' note: The following is an edited version of remarks delivered at The New Criterion's inaugural Circle Lecture on September 25, 2019.

Lenin was more severe.
— Vyacheslav Molotov, the only senior official to work for both Lenin and Stalin, when asked to compare them.

Lenin "in general" loved people but . . . his love looked far ahead, through the mists of hatred.
— Maxim Gorky

When we are reproached with cruelty, we wonder how people can forget the most elementary Marxism.
— Lenin

Beyond Doctrine

An old Soviet joke poses the question: What was the most important world-historical event of the year 1875? Answer: Lenin was five years old.

The point of the joke, of course, is that the Soviets virtually deified Lenin. Criticism of him was routinely referred to as "blasphemy," while icon corners in homes and institutions were replaced by "Lenin corners." Lenin museums sprung up everywhere, and institutions of every kind took his name. In addition to Leningrad, there were cities named Leninsk (in Kazakhstan), Leninogorsk (in Tatarstan), Leninaul (in Dagestan), Leninakan (in Armenia), Leninkend, Leninavan, and at least four different Leninabads. On a visit to the Caucasus I remember being surprised at seeing Mayakovsky's famous verses about Lenin inscribed on a mountaintop: "Lenin lived! Lenin lives! Lenin will live!" The famous mausoleum where his body is preserved served as the regime's most sacred shrine.

As a volcanic eruption cast a pall of ash over the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, tens of thousands fled - but eyebrows were raised after the island nation's PM said they weren't going anywhere without a Covid shot.

The La Soufriere volcano on the eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent erupted on Friday, sending a column of ash 10km into the sky. With some 16,000 people living in the 'red zone' near the volcano, the authorities had been scrambling to put together evacuation plans in the hours leading up to the blast.

The WEF's promotion of a Chinese 'smart face mask' that tracks every breath its wearer takes is further evidence that the changes to Western society over the last 12 months of Covid are intended to be permanent.

"It's only for when you pop into Tesco's to do your weekly shop, what's your problem with that, you selfish 'right-wing' libertarian?" That's how the introduction of mandatory face-masks was sold to us in Britain last summer, by its virtue-signalling, "Look at me, I'm such a good citizen" supporters.

Masks would be temporary - restricted to shops - and as soon as the Covid threat had passed they would be dispensed with, like social distancing. Anyone who said these measures were designed to be permanent - and were part of the global elite's plan to keep the plebs muzzled up forever - was dismissed as a 'crank' and 'a conspiracy theorist'.

Well, nine months on, and where are we?

The UK government has issued a 'road map' for taking us - with the speed of a 150-year-old Galapagos Island tortoise on sleeping tablets - out of lockdown. But there's no mention of when masks and social distancing will be dispensed with.

Could that be because there's no intention of masks and social distancing ever being dispensed with? It certainly appears that way.