Society's Child
Just when you thought Covid-authoritarianism (and authoritarianism is actually putting it mildly), couldn't get any worse, it just did.
This week we've seen a number of politicians and high-profile media figures promote the idea of mandatory vaccine passports. And not just for international travel. On Sunday, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who, I kid yet not, once wrote a book entitled 'The Assault on Liberty', refused to rule out vaccine passports to allow entry to supermarkets and pubs. 'It is under consideration' he said.
Examples of this include the forced retirement of the best automotive refrigerant ever developed - Freon - which cools faster and deeper than the replacements that were forced onto the market by forcing Freon off the market - in the name of the "ozone hole" but in actuality because of expiring patents on Freon that meant it would be much cheaper to make it and so cheaper to buy it than the "ozone-friendly" replacements forced onto the market.
Another example is gasoline - which has been largely forced off the market in favor of adulterated gasoline. What most Americans are forced to pump into their tanks is actually 10 percent ethanol (ethyl alcohol) and only 90 percent gasoline.
Soon, there may be no gasoline at all.
Not because people don't want it but rather because they won't be able to buy it. Because of new laws proliferating forbidding the selling of it.
As in Petaluma, California - where the city council just voted to prohibit new gas stations from being built and also that existing gas stations may not install new pumps. "The goal here is to move away from fossil fuels and to make it as easy as possible to do that," says one of the legislation's main backers, D'Lynda Fischer.
She means her goal; the goal of those forcing their views upon the people of Petaluma. It will be made "easier" for them to not buy gas, in order to make it harder for them to not drive cars that burn gasoline.
See how that works?
It has to work that way, too - because the non-psychopathic way of free exchange determining what succeeds and fails makes it harder to get people to give up what works for them in favor of what "works" for the political psychopaths who regard their way as the only way and intend to make it "easier" for you to see it their way.
Comment: Note this man was homeless and police demanded his details when he was sitting on a city centre bench.
In an important judgment on the legal duties of citizens under the coronavirus regulations Mrs Justice Steyn and Lord Justice Dingemans ruled that Neale was under no common law obligation or statutory duty to give the police his name and address.
Almost a third of prosecutions made under the coronavirus regulations have been wrongly brought, leading to hundreds of cases being dropped. The latest figures from the Crown Prosecution Service showed that 359 of 1,252 charges last year were either withdrawn or quashed in court. All 232 prosecutions brought under the Coronavirus Act 2020 were flawed, and a further 127 wrongful charges were brought under the Health Protection Regulations.
Comment: Sadly law, order, and the rights of citizens as we've come to know them are becoming a distant memory these days: It is not the police's job to enforce the lockdown whims of UK ministers - former senior judge Lord Sumption
Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro has warned that young authors are self-censoring due to a 'climate of fear'.
Speaking to the BBC ahead of the release of his new book, Klara and the Sun, he said authors worry that an 'anonymous lynch mob will turn up online and make their lives a misery'. 'I very much fear for the younger generation of writers', he added.
Comment: See also:
- Harvard club cancels event set to feature expert ... on cancel culture
- 'Cancel culture' in 'dying' US, & opposition media bans in E. Europe makes Russia the world's 'last island of freedom'
- Guardian editor Nathan Robinson insists cancel culture doesn't exist: Gets whacked by the granddaddy of all special interests - Big Israel
- To prove cancel culture doesn't exist, Disney fires actress who condemned cancel culture
- 'Proving my point': Ben Shapiro argues against Dem cancel culture, liberals respond blasting Politico for giving him platform
- Comedian Rowan Atkinson: Cancel culture is 'like a medieval mob'
- Ignore the Leftist gaslighting - cancel culture is real
- Heroes of scholarship: Top 10 ACADEMIC targets of cancel culture in 2020
Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said the government has not received a response that Beijing would change the testing procedure, so Japan would continue to ask China to alter the way of testing.
"Some Japanese reported to our embassy in China that they received anal swab tests, which caused a great psychological pain," Kato told a news conference.
Comment: See also:
- US diplomats offered Covid-19 vaccines by 13 foreign government amid US supply issues, Wapo claims China also offered anal swab tests
- China develops new more protective anal mask
- Oh sh*t. 'Anal swabs for COVID more accurate,' sez Chinese expert
- Back to normal? More like new normal! Beijing tightens Covid restrictions before New Year, deploys ANAL swabs
"The same people behind this attack targeted law enforcement officers and their family members last summer. The feds are treating them as a criminal hacker organization. We are working with our partners in law enforcement on this issue," Andrew Torba, founder and CEO of Gab, wrote.
He said his account and one linked to former President Donald Trump, which isn't directly used by Trump, were compromised just before Trump took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida.
Comment: See also:
- Gab banned from three banks in three weeks due to media smears
- Holding Parler & Gab accounts apparently cost New York literary agency employee her job... after ONE Twitter complaint
- Gab CEO pulls off the impossible for Trump...
- Free speech platform Gab reports 750% increase in traffic amidst big tech crackdown - Parler goes offline - Twitter stock crashes
- The Attack on Social Network Gab Proves That Free Speech Was Never Free
- Gab.com And The Continuing Purge of Free Speech
- Blatant censorship: Social network Gab booted off Internet because Pittsburgh synagogue shooter had account there
- Microsoft threatens to shut down social media site Gab after anti-Semitic posts by random user
- Gab AI, Inc. files lawsuit, declares war on Google
Even as the chirpy happy-talk of a return to normal floods the airwaves, what nobody dares acknowledge is that "normal" for a rising number of Americans is the social depression of downward mobility and social defeat.
Downward mobility is not a new trend -- it's simply accelerating. As this RAND Corporation report documents, (Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018) $50 trillion in earnings has been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households over the past 45 years.
Time magazine's article on the report is remarkably direct: The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% -- And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure.
The California representative joined a chorus of Democrats calling for a truly independent probe into the accusations of misconduct lodged against Cuomo by two of his former staffers.
"The women who have come forward with serious and credible charges against Governor Cuomo deserve to be heard and to be treated with dignity," Pelosi said in a statement.
"The independent investigation must have due process and respect for everyone involved."
The statement came as Cuomo, 63, agreed to let state Attorney General Letitia James appoint an outside investigator into the growing scandal.
Comment: Cuomo has offered up a half-hearted apology for his insensitive jokes towards females that he has worked with. Not that he really is sorry for anything, other than for getting caught being a creepy politician which seems to be a requirement for the job. Unsurprisingly, his apology backfired on him. Instead of just saying, "I shouldn't have done that," Cuomo said that "some of the things" he said "have been misinterpreted as unwanted flirtation." We can always rely on politicians to blame others for their "incorrect interpretation" than to take any real ownership for their behavior. It remains to be seen if anything substantial will come from the investigation, which has just been greenlit by the NY AG.
The FCCC, which is the professional association of Beijing-based journalists reporting on China, has argued that 2020 had seen a "rapid decline in media freedom," implemented under the cover of measures that were used to combat the spread of coronavirus.
In its annual report released on Monday the press group claimed these restrictions were placed on journalists to prevent them from providing an accurate picture of ongoing events in the country, as well as in other areas that are politically sensitive for Beijing, such as Tibet.
As China's propaganda machine struggled to regain control of the narrative around this public health disaster, foreign press outlets were repeatedly obstructed.
Hollywood once again proved itself to be the moral authority of our time when a bevy of stars took to the stage on Sunday night at the 78th annual Golden Globes Awards to rail against President Joe Biden's unconstitutional, murderous airstrikes in Syria, his caging of illegal immigrant kids, and his failure to fight for a $15 minimum wage, Medicare-for-All and a $2,000 stimulus check during this calamitous coronavirus lockdown.
Just kidding.
With the bad orange man gone from the White House, it was back to Hollywood business as usual at the painfully lackluster, socially distanced Golden Globes, where there was a lot of performative virtue signaling about diversity, but no actual political courage on display.
Comment: The PTB are enjoying the fruits of their long-lasting work. Many people are successfully programmed. They exploited this Covid madness for all it's worth and now they can just enjoy the show that the authoritarian followers will run frantically for them. It is just amazing how many people can't see the real intentions of PTB. They act like machines programmed to do certain things despite the evidence in front of their eyes. History is repeating and it looks like the lesson was never learned by some people.
See also: