I think Progressive, Multi-Culturalism will eventually devour itself.

This kind of explains why.

https://www.americanthinker.co…left_comes_for_obama.html

It will be replaced by TAETRONIX and HOVERCRAFT!!!

Samsung researchers describe all-solid-state battery with silver-carbon composite layer

https://chargedevs.com/newswir…-all-solid-state-battery/

Rare earth riddle: China has US by the throat

https://menafn.com/1101820733/…hina-has-US-by-the-throat

China’s Monopoly on Rare Earth Metals is a Critical National Security Risk

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china’s-monopoly-rare-earth-metals-critical-national-security-risk-181261

Will China Weaponise Its Rare Earth Edge?

https://www.huewire.com/will-c…nise-its-rare-earth-edge/

https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/…-a-red-line-in-anchorage/

The verbal salvos between top American diplomats and their Chinese counterparts seemed more like testosterone-driven exchanges between professional wrestlers at the opening session of the US-China high-level meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, held last Thursday and Friday.

It was the first face-to-face meeting between top American and Chinese diplomats since President Joe Biden took office on January 20.

The Chinese side was led by its top diplomat Yang Jiechi, director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office of the Communist Party of China, and State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and the US delegation was led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.

Chinese state media outlets have called the meeting a historic event, and of course, it was a significant event setting the stage for geopolitics and international affairs in the future. It was perhaps the first time US diplomats had had to face such fire and fury from their counterparts publicly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was also probably the first time China had challenged American supremacy publicly.

The US State Department released a transcript of the top Chinese diplomats’ opening remarks outlining Beijing’s foreign-policy stance for the near future. Although there was a heated exchange, China drew a “red line” that will be the core element of the geopolitical contest between the world’s two superpower countries in the future.

There are at least seven takeaways for international-relations students from the war of words between two countries.

First, for China, neither the US nor the Western world represents the whole world’s public opinion.

Yang said in his opening remarks, “We hope that when talking about universal values or international public opinion on the part of the United States, we hope the US side will think about whether it feels reassured in saying those things, because the US does not represent the world. It only represents the government of the United States.

“I don’t think the overwhelming majority of countries in the world would recognize that the universal values advocated by the United States or that the opinion of the United States could represent international public opinion, and those countries would not recognize that the rules made by a small number of people would serve as the basis for the international order.”

Second, Beijing neither accepts US interference in China’s internal affairs nor is willing to trade off its core interests such as territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Wang warned, “Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan are an inalienable part of China’s territory. China is firmly opposed to US interference in China’s internal affairs. We have expressed our staunch opposition to such interference and we will take firm actions in response.”

Third, the Chinese diplomats expressed stiff disagreement with the US claim over universal norms and values. Refuting Blinken’s claim of the “universal” standards and values of human rights and democracy, Yang said, “Our values are the same as the common values of humanity. Those are: peace, development, fairness, justice, freedom, and democracy.”

He added, “We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world.”

For the Chinese, the US versions of democracy and human rights are not universal values. Yang said China would not accept the standards of democracy and human rights imposed by the US. He further said, “the United States has its style – United States-style democracy – and China has Chinese-style democracy.”

Fourth, China neither feels pressure from the US alliance nor accepts the US right to speak on behalf of others.

Responding to the second round of remarks made by Blinken that China has been coercing America’s allies and friends, and Sullivan revealing that the secret of the US success in forging alliances and partnerships was the application of US values, Yang said, “As long as China’s system is right with the wisdom of the Chinese people, there is no way to strangle China. Our history will show that one can only cause damages to himself if he wants to strangle or suppress the Chinese people.”

Adding to this, Wang said, “If the United States would indiscriminately protest and speak up for those countries just because they are your allies or partners, then it will be very difficult for international relations to develop properly.”

He added, “So we don’t think one should be so testy as to accuse some other country of coercion. Who is coercing whom? I think history and the international community will come to their own conclusions.”

Fifth, in China’s view the rule-based international order should be based on the prevailing international law and followed by all. Yang said, “What China and the international community follow or uphold is the United Nations–centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law, not what is advocated by a small number of countries of the so-called ‘rules-based’ international order.”

It seems Yang was referring indirectly to the joint statement of the recent Quad summit. The Chinese bluntly implied that the current American mindset of the “rule-based international order” is based on the notion that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others, as illustrated by George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm.

Sixth, the Chinese side said it would tolerate no more humiliation and insults from the US. Wang bluntly said, “In the past several years, China’s legitimate rights and interests have come under outright suppression, plunging the China-US relationship into a period of unprecedented difficulty.

“This situation must no longer continue. China urges the US side to fully abandon the hegemonic practice of willfully interfering in China’s internal affairs. This has been a long-standing issue and it should be changed. It is time for it to change.”

The Chinese diplomats told their US counterparts that the long practice of long-arm jurisdiction and suppression and overstretched national security through the use of force or financial hegemony are over. The US must change its behavior right now.

Last, the Chinese told the American strategists that the US needs China for its economic interest, but China doesn’t need the US now.

Referring to former president Donald Trump’s trade war, Yang said, “We’ve had a confrontation in the past, and the result did not serve the United States well. What did the United States gain from that confrontation? I didn’t see any, and the only result was damages done to the United States. And China will pull through and has pulled through such confrontation.”

The overall Chinese message to the US is straightforward and clear. The American strategists expected that China’s participation in the globalized economic system and with economic and social development would lead to reform such that China resembled the US politically and economically. Instead, after harnessing all the opportunities from the global economic system, China gained confidence that it has the capacity to alter the global economic system to continue its own political system.

Therefore, China has challenged US primacy publicly.

Quote from billie8eilish

As he should

https://www.lifesitenews.com/n…ews&utm_campaign=standard

https://www.str.org/w/is-abort…n-biblically-permissible-

https://www.epm.org/resources/…us-171114-life-creature-/

Quote from JaedaKim

I really want to learn and grow as a person but I need help

Abortion- how is it right?

I'm really trying to understand so please help me out

https://www.lifesitenews.com/n…ews&utm_campaign=standard

https://www.str.org/w/is-abort…n-biblically-permissible-

https://www.epm.org/resources/…us-171114-life-creature-/

https://schiffgold.com/key-gol…-to-gold-dumping-dollars/

The Russian Finance Ministry has given the green light for the Russian National Wealth fund to diversify and invest in gold and other precious metals. According to a report by RT, this is part of a broader move to de-dollarize the wealth fund.

The National Wealth Fund falls under the direction of the Russian Finance Ministry. One of the fund’s primary purposes is to support the nation’s pension system. According to the fund’s website, “Fund’s primer assignments are to co-finance voluntary pension savings of Russian citizens and to balance the budget of Pension Fund of the Russian Federation.” The fund can also be tapped to cover government budget deficits in times of a crisis. According to RT, as of November, the fund held more than $167 billion in assets, totaling about 12% of Russia’s GDP.

According to RT, the fund’s move into gold and other precious metals is aimed at diversifying assets to ensure the “safety” of the fund “as well as for increasing the yields.”

The Russian central bank has added significant amounts of gold to its reserves in recent years, although halted its buying spree last spring as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world. Prior to the pause, the central bank added an average of 205 tons of gold to its reserves every year since 2014. In February 2018, Russia passed China to become the world’s fifth-largest gold-holding country.

Meanwhile, the Russian central bank was aggressively divesting itself of US Treasuries. Russia sold off nearly half of its US debt in April 2018 alone, dumping $47.4 billion of its $96.1 billion in US Treasuries. In January, the value of Russia’s gold holdings eclipsed its dollar holdings for the first time ever.

Russia’s shrinking dollar reserves is no accident. It was an intentional “de-dollarization” policy outlined by President Putin to lower the country’s exposure to the United States and shield it from the threat of US sanctions.

Gold now ranks as the second-largest component of Russia’s central bank reserves only behind euros. The Central Bank of Russia has also increased its holdings of yuan. The Chinese currency now makes up about 12% of Russian reserves.

It appears the Russian National Wealth Fund is following this same strategy. According to RT, the Ministry of Finance reduced the portion of US dollars and euros in the currency structure of its National Wealth Fund from 45% to 35% last month. It has increased holdings of Japanese yen and Chinese yuan. Now it plans to add gold to that mix.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov previously said he supported the idea of allocating the NWF assets “more efficiently.” He called precious metals a much more sustainable investment than financial market assets in the long-term.

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https://decrypt.co/62989/sec-hester-peirce-nfts

“Crypto Mom” said investors should be careful not to create unregistered securities when buying and selling fractional shares in an NFT.

By Will Gottsegen3 min read
Mar 26, 2021

 NFT RevolutionEthereum

NFTS, OR NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS, ARE CRYPTOGRAPHICALLY UNIQUE TOKENS. IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK

In brief

• SEC commissioner Hester Peirce—sometimes known as “Crypto Mom”—said investors should be wary of creating unregistered investment products with NFTs.
• Fractionalized NFTs could potentially be securities, she said.

The hype around NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, refuses to die down, and regulators are taking notice.

SEC commissioner Hester Peirce, affectionately known as "Crypto Mom" within the cryptocurrency industry, warned investors yesterday that some NFTs could be considered unregistered securities under certain circumstances.

“The whole concept of an NFT is [it’s] supposed to be non-fungible, so it’s supposed to be unlike anything else,” Peirce said during a Security Token Summit webinar on Thursday. “Which means that it’s, I think, in general, less likely to be a security, but people are being very creative in the types of NFTs they’re putting out there. It’s a wonder what some people will pay for. And so I think, given that creativity, as with anything else, you should be asking questions.”

NFTs are cryptographically secured digital assets—essentially just a token attached to an image or video file. They’ve been selling for ridiculous amounts of money (the digital artist Beeple sold a single NFT for $69 million at Christie’s), and have been used to promote music, digital art, tweets, and journalism.

They’ve also posed problems for investors. There are potential copyright issues, as well as ethical concerns around the Ethereum network’s energy consumption; some have suggested that crypto art might make a good vehicle for money laundering (sort of like physical art).

NFT DROP | EulerBeats Enigma LP Auction set for March 29th

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Peirce explained that certain kinds of fundraising efforts tied to NFTs might “raise the same kinds of questions that ICOs

have raised.”

“If you’re doing something where you are saying, ‘I’m going to sell you this thing and I’m going to put a lot of effort into building something so that this thing that you’re buying has a lot of value," those kinds of sales will attract more regulatory scrutiny.

A Brief History of the SEC’s Adventures in Cryptoland

They say it’s never really a party until the cops show up. And in cryptoland, 2018 was the year the SEC came bursting through the door and brought the record player to a screeching halt. Throu...

News

Business Guillermo Jimenez Jan 4, 2019 8 min read 

ICOs, or “initial coin offerings,” have been a thorn in the SEC's side for years; they give early investors in crypto startups the chance to buy into a company’s cryptocurrency, with the promise of return down the line. The issue is that the SEC has taken the position that just about every token ever sold through an ICO is unregistered security, and the Commission has come down hard against these token issuers in lawsuit after lawsuit.

Peirce also suggested fractionalized NFTs (i.e. selling partial interest in a single, expensive NFT) could run the risk of being unregistered securities.

Peirce’s comments add yet another new wrinkle to the NFT gold rush. “You’ve always got to ask those questions,” she said. “As we’ve seen, the definition of a security can be pretty broad.”

https://summit.news/2021/03/30…lism-in-wake-of-pandemic/

Twenty four world leaders have signed a letter calling for more globalism to combat future pandemics, citing the the coronavirus outbreak as an opportunity to consign nationalism to the dustbin of history.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson, German chancellor Angela Merkel, and French president Emmanuel Macron are the leading figures behind the pledge, with 21 other heads of state signing the letter.

It states that “nobody is safe until everyone is safe,” and that a “global community” must be further implemented in order to combat ‘inevitable’ future pandemics.

“At a time when Covid-19 has exploited our weaknesses and divisions, we must seize this opportunity and come together as a global community for peaceful cooperation that extends beyond this crisis,” the letter states.

“Building our capacities and systems to do this will take time and require a sustained political, financial and societal commitment over many years,” it adds.

The letter compares the situation to the aftermath of the Second World War, and urges an end to “isolationism and nationalism”.

The pledge calls for a strengthening of the World Health Organisation’s infrastructure, despite the global health body’s documented failures in regards to the pandemic, and continued charges that it has facilitated the communist Chinese government’s lies and deceptions.

WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also signed the letter, having repeatedly slammed nations including Britain and the US for putting their own populations first when it comes to recovery.

The letter specifically calls for a global treaty on pandemics to be signed to establish international ‘rules and norms’ for vaccine production and distribution, as well as coordination on ‘alert systems, data-sharing and research’.

Presumably any global treaty would also address restrictions to be put in place under future pandemics, although that is not made clear in the letter.

Health ministers of nations are set to meet in May at the World Health Assembly, and could discuss a global treaty there.

Below is the full Letter signed by 24 world leaders:

‘The Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge to the global community since the 1940s. At that time, following the devastation of two world wars, political leaders came together to forge the multilateral system. The aims were clear: to bring countries together, to dispel the temptations of isolationism and nationalism, and to address the challenges that could only be achieved together in the spirit of solidarity and cooperation: namely, peace, prosperity, health and security.
‘Today, we hold the same hope that as we fight to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic together, we can build a more robust international health architecture that will protect future generations. There will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies. No single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone. The question is not if, but when. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly coordinated fashion. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe.
‘We are, therefore, committed to ensuring universal and equitable access to safe, efficacious and affordable vaccines, medicines and diagnostics for this and future pandemics. Immunisation is a global public good and we will need to be able to develop, manufacture and deploy vaccines as quickly as possible. This is why the Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) was set up in order to promote equal access to tests, treatments and vaccines and support health systems across the globe. ACT-A has delivered on many aspects but equitable access is yet to be achieved. There is more we can do to promote global access.
‘To that end, we believe that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response. Such a renewed collective commitment would be a milestone in stepping up pandemic preparedness at the highest political level. It would be rooted in the constitution of the World Health Organisation, drawing in other relevant organisations key to this endeavour, in support of the principle of health for all. Existing global health instruments, especially the International Health Regulations, would underpin such a treaty, ensuring a firm and tested foundation on which we can build and improve.
‘The main goal of this treaty would be to foster an all-of-government and all-of-society approach, strengthening national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics. This includes greatly enhancing international cooperation to improve, for example, alert systems, data-sharing, research, and local, regional and global production and distribution of medical and public health countermeasures, such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.
‘It would also include recognition of a ‘One Health’ approach that connects the health of humans, animals and our planet. And such a treaty should lead to more mutual accountability and shared responsibility, transparency and cooperation within the international system and with its rules and norms.
‘To achieve this, we will work with heads of state and governments globally and all stakeholders, including civil society and the private sector. We are convinced that it is our responsibility, as leaders of nations and international institutions, to ensure that the world learns the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘At a time when Covid-19 has exploited our weaknesses and divisions, we must seize this opportunity and come together as a global community for peaceful cooperation that extends beyond this crisis. Building our capacities and systems to do this will take time and require a sustained political, financial and societal commitment over many years.
‘Our solidarity in ensuring that the world is better prepared will be our legacy that protects our children and grandchildren and minimises the impact of future pandemics on our economies and our societies. Pandemic preparedness needs global leadership for a global health system fit for this millennium. To make this commitment a reality, we must be guided by solidarity, fairness, transparency, inclusiveness and equity.’
Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; Emmanuel Macron, president of France; Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany; Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation and 21 other world leaders.

https://www.reuters.com/article/taiwan-palau-idUSL1N2LR0R0

TAIPEI, March 29 (Reuters) - Ten Chinese military aircraft including fighter jets entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on Monday, as Palau’s president visited the Beijing-claimed island accompanied, unusually, by Washington’s ambassador to the country.

Taiwan’s air force has repeatedly scrambled to intercept Chinese aircraft in recent months, including 20 on Friday, as Beijing seeks to assert its sovereignty and warn the United States to cease its support for the democratic island.

The 10 Chinese aircraft consisted of eight fighters and two surveillance planes, the latter of which flew around southern Taiwan and into the Pacific, according to Taiwan’s Defence Ministry, adding its air force scrambled to warn them away.

The defence ministry’s announcement came less than half an hour after Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr., whose country is one of only 15 to maintain formal ties with Taipei, spoke to reporters about Chinese pressure against his island.

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Whipps said nobody could dictate who his Pacific country of fewer than 20,000 people was friends with, recalling China’s decision in 2017 to effectively ban tour groups, branding it an illegal destination due to its lack of diplomatic status.

“I said if you’re in a relationship, I use this example, you don’t beat your wife to make them love you,” he said.

“I’ve been told that the opportunities, that the sky’s the limit,” Whipps added, referring to China. “But, you know, we have to base our relationships on trust and what’s happened in the past.”

Whipps, who took office in January, is being accompanied by the U.S. ambassador to Palau, John Hennessey-Niland, in a strong show of U.S. support for countries, particularly in the Pacific, to stick with Taiwan.

The United States, like most countries, has no diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and China’s Foreign Ministry earlier on Monday criticised the ambassador’s appearance in Taipei, urging Washington to stop official contacts with Taiwan.

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Whipps said the ambassador - who did not take questions from reporters - was there to demonstrate a shared commitment to democracy and freedom in the region.

“As a small nation we can easily be infiltrated and we depend on our partners to protect us and give us security,” Whipps said.

The Pacific is the site of a growing diplomatic tug-of-war between Beijing and Washington, which has watched with concern China’s efforts to snatch away Taiwan’s allies.

In 2019, China took two of Taiwan’s friends there, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands. Nauru, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands have, like Palau, stuck with Taipei.

China has not commented on its recent air force activities near Taiwan. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Meg Shen in Hong Long; Editing by William Maclean)

https://anti-empire.com/amp/lo…ulsive-and-all-around-us/

Daniela Lamas, a critical care doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has written a terrifying article in the Washington Post. It’s about the non-Covid cases of sickness in her hospital. There are older Americans dying of malnutrition, young men drinking themselves to death, others with cancers that could have been treated had they not skipped medical services for a full year, and drug overdoses breaking all records.

The article is a wake-up call for those who have thus far refused to recognize that there is more to public health than the avoidance of the pathogen with the name SARS-CoV-2. Good public health deals with the whole range of threats to human well being. As the epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff has stated, “[p]ublic health is about all health outcomes, not just a single disease like Covid-19. It is important to also consider harms from public health measures.”

There is just one problem with the piece: it never specifically blames lockdowns, even though the author details all the devastating consequences of these policies. She is almost too careful in her explanation:

Quote

Though we have always known that the cost of this pandemic would be greater than the number of the dead, we are only beginning to understand its true magnitude. In what might be a final wave of this pandemic, we find ourselves treating patients who have avoided the virus only to succumb to its many unintended consequences — addiction, untreated disease and despair.

It wasn’t the pandemic that caused this single-minded focus. It was government-imposed measures enacted in response to the pandemic. She surely knows that. A pathogen alone with such a narrow demographic impact cannot cause such devastation in so many. It’s the “nonpharmaceutical interventions” – there are many euphemisms – that locked people out of their workplaces, schools, hospitals, and churches, wrecking life for billions of people worldwide.

“The long shadow of this disease is everywhere,” she writes. It’s a long shadow all right, but the shadow belongs to government policy mainly, and, partially, the public panic fueled by media hysteria that led people to acquiesce to massive violations of their rights and freedoms.

This article is just one example among many thousands of lockdown denialism.

Why do major media outlets continue to engage in this wiley rhetorical game?

Consider these headlines: Pandemic caused changes, disruptions for drug treatment programs, specialty courtsWHO says pandemic has caused more ‘mass trauma’ than WWII Pandemic caused $220 billion of global dividend cuts in 2020, research saysPandemic caused ‘staggering’ economic, human impact in global south, study saysPandemic caused 10% drop in community college enrollmentPandemic caused dramatic job losses Covid-19 pandemic caused alarming rise in mental illnesses across globe, say expertsPandemic caused worst year for US economy since 1946Has the pandemic caused a crisis in child care? How the Pandemic Can Trigger DepressionThe Lost Year: What the Pandemic Cost Teenagers

Plus thousands more. The world’s most conspicuous offender is of course the New York Times, which releases several articles per day that carefully avoid naming the true culprit, with analyses such as this:

Quote

Research has shown that some of the disproportionate impact on women was driven by the need to care for children during the pandemic, a circumstance that is often not captured in the official unemployment rate, which accounts only for people actively seeking work.

The data in the article are solid. The problem is the causal inference. It’s always the pandemic – and yes it is true that the lockdowns happened “during the pandemic” – and never the forced closures, even though we have plenty of data from open vs closed states to prove that the whole of the economic/social/medical impact is accounted for not by the existence of a germ but by government’s brutal treatment of people and their rights.

Ezra Klein deploys what is now the very predictable trope here, where he worries about:

Quote

what the coronavirus has done to children — whether this year will be a trauma that marks a generation, and remakes their lives. How has it changed socialization for toddlers — like my 2-year-old son? What has it meant for children who can’t go to school, who watched their parents lose work or who had family members die alone in a hospital? How do we help them? How do we even understand what they’ve gone through, particularly when they can’t tell us?

Do I really need to point out that the risk of severe outcomes from the virus to children approaches zero? Surely everyone knows that by now. The childhood trauma is shocking to consider but it’s not the coronavirus’s doing. It was the shutdowns of schools, the mandatory isolation, the forced masking, the persistent messaging that they and their fellow kids are nothing more than disease vectors.

In other words, it’s the lockdowns. Why not say so? Why the taboo?

The habit of lockdown denialism even extends to the crime pages, such as when the NYT reports on the tragic death of the ten-year old Ayden Wolfe:

Quote

Ayden, an only child, had been attending elementary school remotely during the pandemic, prosecutors said, adding that he had been inside the apartment for months without in-person interactions with teachers, counselors or nurses…. Mr. Giacalone said that the pandemic was likely to have made it easier to hide any abuse Ayden was suffering.

Another Times writer, David Gruski, penned this tortured sentence: “For far too many American workers, the pandemic has delivered a one-two punch of hardship.”

It’s a preposterous claim on the face of it: 80% of the deaths associated with Covid are people over 65; below the age of 70, the chance of death from infection is 0.05%. One might expect that this would be public knowledge by now. It is not the virus delivering the one-two punch. It is government policy. It feels silly having to point this out but one has to when the best and brightest of our reporters so carefully avoid the point.

The avoidance of this reality cannot be an accident. In another illogical and gigantic piece for the Washington Post, the reporter pretends as if the lockdowns were a fait accompli, even though nothing like this has ever happened before.

“That virus, later named SARS-CoV-2, would slowly reveal its secrets — and proceed to shut down much of the planet,” says the team of reporters, studiously avoiding the obvious fact that a pathogen has no enforcement power of its own. It carries no guns, enforces no edicts, padlocks no school or business, and issues no stay-home order. It’s the lockdown that does that and the economic consequences were devastating.

The latest master of lockdown denialism is Bernie Sanders who on the Senate floor said brutally true things but somehow failed to mention that government caused them all:

https://nationalfile.com/milli…protest-for-face-freedom/

Mask Burning Will Commence In Cooperation With Law Enforcement

American freedom lovers will gather in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on Saturday April 10 to protest for Face Freedom. (READ: Numbers In The New CDC Report DESTROY The Case For Mask Mandates).

“You are invited to the Million Maskless March and Mask Burning, Saturday April 10, 2021 at 3pm at the Corner of A1A and Las Olas in Ft Lauderdale!,” writes protest organizer Chris Nelson, who has organized viral flash mobs at chain stores that re-popularized Twisted Sister’s protest anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”

Read More

“April 10 marks one year of mask tyranny in Broward County and we will mark that date with a celebration of freedom! It will feature recognition and prizes for those who have faithfully endured this last year, addresses from local leaders and activists and most importantly (and fun) a mask burning! The mask burning is in full cooperation with local law enforcement and will be done in a safe and controlled manner. Following the mask burning we will March north on A1A, make a sharp left at Seabreeze and march back to where we began. The event will be over by 5pm. April is a very busy time for Ft Lauderdale Beach and this is exactly why this location was chosen. Jesus said we should not hide our light, but show it to the whole world. Our goal is for people to see us and be inspired to join in!,” Nelson wrote.

A chemical that causes penile shrinkage was found in face masks, and Dr. Fauci famously said that Americans do not need to wear masks to guard themselves from Coronavirus before he changed his tune and fought for the extended masking of the human people. Christian actor Kirk Cameron recently defied the globalist establishment by hosting Maskless Christmas Caroling events. Though President Donald Trump is not involved in the anti-mask protest, he released a statement Monday dunking all over Dr. Anthony Fauci. President Trump said, “Dr. Fauci also said we didn’t need to wear masks, then a few months later he said we needed to wear masks, and now, two or three of them. Fauci spent U.S. money on the Wuhan lab in China—and we now know how that worked out.”

Nelson’s recent work includes the viral Anti-Mask Flash Mob at Target, which sparked whiny outrage from Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, who has apparently joined the establishment since singing “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in the 1980’s.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/…etization-of-the-american

The transformation from phony "objectivity" to open one-party orthodoxy hasn't been an improvement

I collect Soviet newspapers. Years ago, I used to travel to Moscow’s Izmailovsky flea market every few weeks, hooking up with a dealer who crisscrossed the country digging up front pages from the Cold War era. I have Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep.

These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any Pravda headline in advance. What else but “A Mighty Demonstration of the Union of the Party and the People” fit the day after Supreme Soviet elections? What news could come from the Spanish civil war but “Success of the Republican Fleet?” Who could earn an obit headline but a “Faithful Son of the Party”?

Reality in Soviet news was 100% binary, with all people either heroes or villains, and the villains all in league with one another (an SR was no better than a fascist or a “Right-Trotskyite Bandit,” a kind of proto-horseshoe theory). Other ideas were not represented, except to be attacked and deconstructed. Also, since anything good was all good, politicians were not described as people at all but paragons of limitless virtue — 95% of most issues of Pravda or Izvestia were just names of party leaders surrounded by lists of applause-words, like “glittering,” “full-hearted,” “wise,” “mighty,” “courageous,” “in complete moral-political union with the people,” etc.

Some of the headlines in the U.S. press lately sound suspiciously like this kind of work:

— Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty

— Champion of the middle class comes to the aid of the poor

— Biden's historic victory for America

The most Soviet of the recent efforts didn’t have a classically Soviet headline. “Comedians are struggling to parody Biden. Let’s hope this doesn’t last,” read the Washington Post opinion piece by Richard Zoglin, arguing that Biden is the first president in generations who might be “impervious to impressionists.” Zoglin contended Biden is “impregnable” to parody, his voice being too “devoid of obvious quirks,” his manner too “muted and self-effacing” to offer comedians much to work with. He was talking about this person:

Forget that the “impregnable to parody” pol spent the last campaign year jamming fingers in the sternums of voters, challenging them to pushup contests, calling them “lying dog-faced pony soldiers,” and forgetting what state he was in. Biden, on the day Zoglin ran his piece, couldn’t remember the name of his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and referred to the Department of Defense as “that outfit over there”:

It doesn’t take much looking to find comedians like James Adomian and Anthony Atamaniuk ab-libbing riffs on Biden with ease. He checks almost every box as a comic subject, saying inappropriate things, engaging in wacky Inspector Clouseau-style physical stunts (like biting his wife’s finger), and switching back and forth between outbursts of splenetic certainty and total cluelessness. The parody doesn’t even have to be mean — you could make it endearing cluelessness. But to say nothing’s there to work with is bananas.

The first 50 days of Biden’s administration have been a surprise on multiple fronts. The breadth of his stimulus suggests a real change from the Obama years, while hints that this administration wants to pick a unionization fight with Amazon go against every tendency of Clintonian politics. But it’s hard to know what much of it means, because coverage of Biden increasingly resembles official press releases, often featuring embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions.

When Biden decided not to punish Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi on the grounds that the “cost” of “breaching the relationship with one of America’s key Arab allies” was too high, the New York Times headline read: “Biden Won’t Penalize Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Killing, Fearing Relations Breach.” When Donald Trump made the same calculation, saying he couldn’t cut ties because “the world is a very dangerous place” and “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the paper joined most of the rest of the press corps in howling in outrage.

“In Extraordinary Statement, Trump Stands With Saudis Despite Khashoggi Killing.” was the Times headline, in a piece that said Trump’s decision was “a stark distillation of the Trump worldview: remorselessly transactional, heedless of the facts, determined to put America’s interests first, and founded on a theory of moral equivalence.” The paper noted, “Even Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill expressed revulsion.”

This week, in its “Crusader for the Poor” piece, the Times described Biden’s identical bin Salman decision as mere evidence that he remains “in the cautious middle” in his foreign policy. The paper previously had David Sanger dig up a quote from former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, who “applauded Mr. Biden for ‘trying to thread the needle here… This is the classic example of where you have to balance your values and your interests.’” It’s two opposite takes on exactly the same thing.

The old con of the Manufacturing Consent era of media was a phony show of bipartisanship. Legitimate opinion was depicted as a spectrum stretching all the way from “moderate” Democrats (often depicted as more correct on social issues) to “moderate” Republicans (whose views on the economy or war were often depicted as more realistic). That propaganda trick involved constantly narrowing the debate to a little slice of the Venn diagram between two established parties. Did we need to invade Iraq right away to stay safe, as Republicans contended, or should we wait until inspectors finished their work and then invade, as Democrats insisted?

The new, cleaved media landscape advances the same tiny intersection of elite opinion, except in the post-Trump era, that strip fits inside one party. Instead of appearing as props in a phony rendering of objectivity, Republicans in basically all non-Fox media have been moved off the legitimacy spectrum, and appear as foils only. Allowable opinion is now depicted stretching all the way from one brand of “moderate” Democrat to another.

An example is the Thursday New York Times story, “As Economy Is Poised to Soar, Some Fear a Surge in Inflation.” It’s essentially an interview with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who’s worried about the inflationary impact of the latest Covid-19 rescue (“The question is: Does [it] overheat everything?”), followed by quotes from Fed chair Jerome Powell insisting that no, everything is cool. This is the same Larry Summers vs. Janet Yellen debate that’s been going on for weeks, and it represents the sum total of allowable economic opinions about the current rescue, stretching all the way from “it’s awesome” to “it’s admirable but risky.”

This format isn’t all that different from the one we had before, except in one respect: without the superficial requirement to tend to a two-party balance, the hagiography in big media organizations flies out of control. These companies already tend to wash out people who are too contentious or anti-establishment in their leanings. Promoted instead, as even Noam Chomsky described a generation ago, are people with the digestive systems of jackals or monitor lizards, who can swallow even the most toxic piles of official nonsense without blinking. Still, those reporters once had to at least pretend to be something other than courtiers, as it was considered unseemly to openly gush about a party or a politician.

Now? Look at the Times feature story on Biden’s pandemic relief bill:

Quote

On Friday, “Scranton Joe” Biden, whose five-decade political identity has been largely shaped by his appeal to union workers and blue-collar tradesmen like those from his Pennsylvania hometown, will sign into law a $1.9 trillion spending plan that includes the biggest antipoverty effort in a generation…
The new role as a crusader for the poor represents an evolution for Mr. Biden, who spent much of his 36 years in Congress concentrating on foreign policy, judicial fights, gun control, and criminal justice issues… Aides say he has embraced his new role… [and] has also been moved by the inequities in pain and suffering that the pandemic has inflicted on the poorest Americans…

You’d never know from reading this that Biden’s actual record on criminal justice issues involved boasting about authoring an infamous crime bill (that did “everything but hang people for jaywalking”), or that he’s long been a voracious devourer of corporate and especially financial services industry cash, that his “Scranton Joe” rep has been belied by a decidedly mixed history on unions, and so on. Can he legitimately claim to be more pro-union than his predecessor? Sure, but a news story that paints the Biden experience as stretching from “hero to the middle class” to “hero to the poor,” is a Pravda-level stroke job.

We now know in advance that every Biden address will be reviewed as historic and exceptional. It was only a mild shock to see Chris Wallace say Biden’s was the "the best inaugural address I have ever heard.” More predictable was Politico saying of Thursday night’s address that “it is hard to imagine any other contemporary politician making the speech Biden did… channeling our collective sorrow and reminding us that there is life after grief.” (Really? Hard to imagine any contemporary politician doing that?).

Quote from y2k-gay

how do you listen to someone all the time but consider them trash-

the TRASH is produced by savvy, manipulative engineers on very expensive and high tech machines.

if you just had to listen to the TRASH lyrics without all the infectious ear candy, nobody would pay attention.

a really good beat or bass line, or just a catchy lyric hook can stimulate the more primitive parts of most people.

i like bits and pieces of lots of songs produced by TRASH that i despise, not because of them, but DESPITE them.

look closely at the artist credits to your favorite TRASH songs. the Trashy lyricist/vocalist most likely did NOT produce the catchy beats that make up most of the tracks in the song. they hired studio musicians to PROGRAM machines made in ASIA to do that work.

so what you really are in love with is the synthesizers and drum machines that are making the noise you crave.

not the asshole rapping verbal diarrhea

https://www.ageofautism.com/20…ism-1-in-10000-amish.html

Olmsted on Autism: 1 in 10,000 Amish

It is unanimous, apparently -- the rate of autism among the Amish is low. Really, really low. So low that if it were the same in the rest of the population, we wouldn't even be talking about the subject. Shockingly low.

But not so shocking that anyone feels compelled to follow up on the information or its logical implications -- not four years ago when I first pointed it out, not today when the clues it contains are more intriguing than ever -- in fact, never, never, never.

In April 2005 I wrote a UPI column called The Amish Anomaly that began this way: "Where are the autistic Amish? Here in Lancaster County, heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, there should be well over 100 with some form of the disorder. I have come here to find them, but so far my mission has failed ..."

In case anyone had any lingering doubts about the virtual absence of autism among the Amish, they were effectively put to rest on Friday night's Larry King segment when Dr. Max Wiznitzer -- defending the vaccine program, arguing autism has not increased and insisting it is a genetic disorder preset from birth, said the rate of autism in northeastern Ohio, the nation's largest Amish community, was 1 in 10,000. He should know, he said: "I'm their neurologist."

So in a nation with an autism rate of 66 per 10,000 -- cut that in half if you want, to focus just on full-syndrome, classic, Kanner autism -- we're looking at a population with one-sixty-sixth, or one thirty-third, or one-whatever, the going rate. Heck, let's just say the autism rate in the USA were only 10 per 10,000; for some reason, the Amish autism rate would still be an order of magnitude lower. That, as they say in the medical journals, is statistically significantly. Massively so, I would say.

That leaves, it seems to me, two questions: Why is the rate so much lower, and why doesn't anyone in mainstream medicine seem to care, other than to fling it out as a debating point to demonstrate -- what, exactly?

Dr. Wiznitzer said those Amish were vaccinated. Well, OK, interesting. That's half right, according to what I reported about that same area back in June of 2005:

"The autism rate for U.S. children is 1 in 166, according to the federal government. The autism rate for the Amish around Middlefield, Ohio, is 1 in 15,000, according to Dr. Heng Wang.

"He means that literally: Of 15,000 Amish who live near Middlefield, Wang is aware of just one who has autism. If that figure is anywhere near correct, the autism rate in that community is astonishingly low.

"Wang is the medical director, and a physician and researcher, at the DDC Clinic for Special Needs Children, created three years ago to treat the Amish in northeastern Ohio.

"I take care of all the children with special needs," he said, putting him in a unique position to observe autism. "The one case Wang has identified is a 12-year-old boy."

He said half the children in the area were vaccinated, half weren't. That child, he said, was vaccinated, but let's not split hairs here. Either vaccinated or unvaccinated, that's a low rate -- 1 in 5000. The question I didn't think to ask at the time but will soon, is, exactly how were those half vaccinated? Flu shots for pregnant moms? Hep B at birth? Chickenpox and MMR on the same day at one year? Rotavirus, Hep B, Hep A, and on and on? Or did it look more like the less intense, less front-loaded schedule in place in the rest of the country back before the autism epidemic began? The kind Jenny and Jim and J.B. and Jerry (hey, the four J's!) keep harking back to when the autism rate was, like, 1 in 10,000 and we still managed to stave off wholesale plagues.

Let's even stipulate that the vaccine schedule for every single Amish child is now fully loaded and follows the CDC to a T. What is Wiznitzer's point? That the Amish genes protect them? Well, good for them, then, let's find out why. Or, that some kind of other environmental risk is absent? In that case, autism is a genetic vulnerability with an environmental trigger, and something about the Amish world is not triggering it, which puts us back about where I started four years ago. There would have been plenty of time to have the answer right now if Julie Gerberding weren't still filibustering the question by talking about numerators, denominators and getting more research into the pipeline as fast as bureaucratically possible (meaning never, never, never).

Critics of the Amish Anomaly -- like critics of the idea that vaccines might be implicated in autism -- want to have it every which way. First, they want to say I just plain missed all the autism cases -- droning on about the Clinic For Special Children, which refused to speak with me over a period of many months. When one of their doctors did finally talk to a blogger whose stated purpose was to tear my reporting apart (a "fraud," he called me), that doctor said, oh yes, they do see Amish kids with autism -- but then went on to say those were ONLY kids with other identifiable genetic disorders. In other words, risk factors. He specifically said they DO NOT see "idiopathic autism," a basically nonsense phrase that he used to mean autism without any other accompanying disorders. In other words, they don't see the kind of autism now running at a rate of 1 in 100 or so in the rest of the country. The kind no one can figure out. The kind that is destroying a generation and their families and our future along with it. ("You don't have an affected child," people tell me. Yes, but I have an affected world.)

By asserting the Amish have an autism rate of 1 in 10,000 Wiznitzer is in fact scoring a point -- they call it an "own goal," an "oops, I didn't mean to tap the other team's shot in." The point he's accidentally but effectively reinforcing is the one made by the unfailingly intelligent Bernadine Healy -- that there are so many, many obvious studies being left undone by those afraid to do them, even as they sneer and snarl at the rest of us. The Amish are just one study left undone among -- well, one among ten thousand or so.

https://nypost.com/2021/03/28/…immunity-health-official/

An Amish community in Pennsylvania may have become the first group in the US to achieve herd immunity, a local health official claims.

The administrator of a medical center in the heart of Lancaster County’s New Holland Borough, which is known for its Amish and Mennonite communities, estimates that as many as 90 percent of the religious families have had at least one family member infected with the virus.

“So, you would think if COVID was as contagious as they say, it would go through like a tsunami; and it did,” said Allen Hoover, an administrator of the Parochial Medical Center, which caters to the religious community and has 33,000 patients.

The Amish and Mennonite groups initially complied with stay-at-home orders at the beginning of the pandemic — shuttering schoolhouses and canceling church services.

But by late April, they had resumed worship services, where they shared communion cups and holy kisses, a church greeting among believers.

Soon after, the virus tore throughout the religious enclave.

“It was bad here in the spring; one patient right after another,” said Pam Cooper, a physician’s assistant at the Parochial Medical Center.

How will we know we’ve reached herd immunity?

In late April and early May, the county’s positivity rate for COVID-19 tests exceeded 20 percent, according to nonprofit Covid Act Now.

But Hoover said that it’s impossible to know the full extent of the virus outbreak since he estimates that fewer than 10 percent of patients displaying symptoms consented to being tested.

The medical center saw on average nearly a dozen infections a day, or around 15 percent of the patients it serves daily, Hoover said.

While infections ebbed through the summer, before picking up again in the fall, Hoover said new cases are now far and few in between.

The center hasn’t had a patient present with virus symptoms in roughly six weeks, Hoover said.

But some experts are more skeptical that a large outbreak has led to widespread immunity in the community.

Eric Lofgren, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Washington State University, said herd immunity is possible but rare.

“It would be the first general population in the United States that’s done it,” Lofgren said.

Shots in little arms: COVID-19 vaccine testing turns to kids

Though experts have suggested that as many as 90 percent of people would need to be infected to achieve herd immunity, others said the exact threshold is still unclear.

“The key is that there is not necessarily a magic number,” said David Dowdy, a professor in the epidemiology department at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Previous infections also might not be enough to protect against new variants of the virus, some experts have warned.

“The only true herd immunity that we can bring as a community is for people to be vaccinated,” said Alice Yoder, executive director of Community Health at Penn Medicine

https://www.blackenterprise.co…r-and-lil-nas-x-responds/

https://www.the-sun.com/entert…l-nas-x-destroying-youth/

https://meaww.com/candace-owen…ress-conference-reactions