Open Thread

American corporate leaders are goons, in every sense of the word.

I’ve had sit-downs with three VPs from a huge corporation. Each presided over thousands, or tens of thousands of “heads”. This wasn’t because I was special, but more as a result of sheer luck. One was the son of my parents’ neighbor. Another was in my wifes parish – she’d even babysat for him. The third I worked for, and he’d risen sharply (and surprisingly) through the ranks. We’d had several one on ones.

As a gigger needing work I called that last one. He’d given me top ‘above and beyond’ performance awards and I assumed I’d be an automatic hire. When he said: “I’m not involved with the hiring but will give your name to somebody who is” I knew I was out.

This is the exact thing you don’t want to hear. All top managers are always involved with the hiring because that’s the way the system works. They’re mini-dictators. HR and hiring teams are essentially powerless, only there to cull resumes from unknowns and to protect the power players. I guessed that I was on the bad list mostly because
I’d witnessed various incompetencies from that manager – he was no god, just another guy who was well-connected and street smart. He knew I was perceptive, and as a potential loose cannon he didn’t want that shit getting out. What you want to hear is something like: “Hey buddy, where’ve you been? I’ll give my recommendation to my hiring team ASAP. When can you start?” I know because that’s what a different manager said and he hired me.

In the states, your fit within a given political system is far more important than any proven abilities. Maybe it was always so, but I think that system got supercharged with all the outsourcing from neoliberalism.

“If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ’em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.” –The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy

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Look at a few studies that claim Covid vaccines saved lives.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext

The study was funded by vaccine manufacturers, and organizations that mandated covid vaccines.
One of the authors is on Moderna’s board. Other authors were paid by multiple different vaccine manufacturers.

The study’s conclusion is that the Covid vaccines saved 14.4 million lives in 1 year.

Here is how they reached that number
“Vaccination was assumed to confer protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe disease requiring hospital admission, and to reduce transmission”
“we used model-based estimates of all-cause excess mortality,”

To sum up they assumed the Covid vaccines were effective and safe to show the vaccines were effective and safe. The term for this is circular reasoning.
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“Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions.” –Dune

“The description is not the described; if you are caught in the description then you will never see.” -Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” ― Albert Einstein

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https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.12.24301206v1.full-text

The authors employer was funded by vaccine manufacturers.
The study was funded by a U.S. CDC cooperative agreement. To put this another way the study was funded under an agreement made by an organization that owns dozens of vaccine patents, makes billions a year selling vaccines, and forced people to take Covid vaccines.

The study conclusion is that in the Eurozone the Covid vaccines saved 1.4 million lives from Dec 2020 to march 2023.

Despite the databases containing all-cause mortality data the authors purposely decided to cherry pick and exclude 85% of deaths.

Here is how they made their estimate:
“we estimated the cumulative expected COVID-19 mortality rate”
“We estimated the impact of the vaccine program on COVID-19 mortality by calculating the percentage change (equation 4) between observed deaths and expected deaths.”

Similar to the first study this study doesn’t look at the data and make a conclusion.
Instead they “estimated” how many deaths they “expected” would have occurred without the Vaccines.
The study had access to the data to compare changes in mortality and associated vaccination rates but decided against using that.

On one side we have studies that use the actual data showing Covid vaccines increase mortality. On the other side we have people with conflicts of interests “expecting” “assuming” and “estimating” that the vaccines saved lives.

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“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” -1984

“They are not mad. They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.”― Dune

“The problem really is not that we do not know the truth, but that we do not want to know it.” —Nils Melzer

When I was eleven I lived with my mom and two little sisters at the edge of a farm town in Mormon country with wheat and beet fields all around.

There was a nearby pig farm, whose sad inhabitants occupied filthy muddy pig pens where they ate, shat wallowed and procreated. The stench hung like a miasma in the summer air.

I used to wander over and watch them mate with the males mounting from behind and inserting their corkscrew penises into their female partners.

That hog farm (and they had chicken warehouses as well) was family owned through generations no doubt. And the pork products were sold to middlemen who brokered them to processors, or so I’m guessing. And there’s your morning sausage.

When I lived in rural Spain I rode my mountain bike through the back country and came across big block concrete buildings housing pigs that were processed into bacon and smoked ham. Jamón serrano hanging from the racks of tapa bars. And oh yeah, the stench from those factory pig farms reeked for kilometers across an otherwise idyllic countryside.

All of this is my response to GJ’s question about how the sausage is made.

Damned if I I know, but it stinks for sure.

I fortunately never had an issue with any of the traditional vaccines I chose to receive for polio, measles, smallpox.. The MRNA products are not traditional vaccines; in fact, the definition of ‘vaccine’ was changed by major publishers including Merriam Webster back in 2021. This was around the time they introduced the smear term ‘anti-vaxxer’ which is almost as absurd as the term ‘anti-semite’ – though I don’t know that anything will ever rise to the level of imbecility that definitionally/historically inaccurate and utterly stupid term has engendered.

https://odysee.com/@WakeUpMirror:3/DPD-RJ:d?t=222

Notice the implied derision in the alleged question/phrasing of ‘what first sent you down this path’ as if those of us who decided not to get the MRNA concoctions after daring to ‘do our own research’ have gone down a rabbit hole of ‘conspiracy’ and are hopeless buffoons.

In choosing ‘this path’ by using the tiny bit of intelligence afforded me, I have avoided being a party to this inanity:

https://odysee.com/@EarthNewspaper:e/The-Unvaccinated–Nobody-Is-Safe!-by-Matt-Orfalea:4

For those interested: The ‘vaccines’ continue to be produced and distributed under an EUA that removes any and all potential liability from the manufacturers. The ‘vaccine’ group in the thoroughly unprofessional Pfizer trials (those given the MRNA dose) had more deaths than the control group.

Read that again. Now think.

There have been too many ‘vax’ injuries to count at this point. And deaths. In the US the rarely-used-by-doctors-because-it’s-a-pain-in-the-ass VAERS database nevertheless recorded more issues with these new MRNA doses than with all previous vaccines combined.

Read that again now please. Now ponder.

I believe that the vast majority of premature deaths that we continue to see and that have become normalized now, as well as the proliferation of cancers, heart issues, menstrual issues, other diseases and weird new maladies are due primarily to the MRNA shots, not covid itself.

I suspect that the ” no jerks” rule for attendees at Bohemian Grove meant ” no jerky behavior against the sort of people who might well be invited to attend Bohemian Grove”. I suspect the Bohemian Grovers smile upon mass jerkitude by their own class of people against mass quantities of the classes below the Bohemian Grove class.

I have always understood the Bohemian Grove to be attended mainly by the very highest level members of the Upper Service Classes . . . ” head butlers, head coachmen, wealth managers” and etc. CIA leaders were not overthrowing and assassinating for the fun of it. They were doing it to serve the money or power interests of the ruling elites who authorised the creation of CIA to begin with, and who staffed it to do these things. The DC/UK governments didn’t overthrow Mossadegh for fun, they did it to keep the British-owned oil companies operating in Iran strictly private and strictly British owned.

I doubt that the people for whom Bohemian Grovers work would bother to attend Bohemian Grove themselves, unless some individuals among the Tippy Top Master-Owner Class had a strictly self-amusement desire to go “slumming” among the Bohemian Grovers.

And the WEF attracts a sort of person even lower on the “status” ladder than the power-adjacent people who attend Bohemian Grove. The WEF attracts sweaty strivers, desperate status climbers, nouveau riches who do not quite feel status-fulfilled by their newly-aquired billions of dollars, etc. You would have to be pretty psychologically and emotionally desperate to pay $50,000 or whatever the ticket price is to attend WEF meetings at Davos just so you can be see and be seen with all the other people who pay $50,000 to be seen at Davos with all the people who will pay to see and be seen at Davos. If you KNOW that you are REAL-y imPORtant, you don’t feel driven to pay to go to Davos.

But that’s just my intuition talking. I am not up in the Davos class at all, let along Bohemian Grove, let even more alone the quiet undisclosed places where genuine world-ruling power meets, greets and resides.

I hear the WEF meetings are lots of fun and that the food is good. I would love to go if Klaus Schwab decides to pay my way there and back, handle every little detail of all my travel there and back, and pays for every aspect and every second of my presence there. Including all the Davos food I can eat.

And the same for Bohemian Grove, of course. I could pretend to be a High Stratospherian just slumming it there among the Elite Service Personnel of Bohemian Grove.

I do not think we have anyone we can trust in an institution we can trust to “do the research” that most us can not do, to determine what is the case. Any case. A proliferation of neoliberal public-private partnerships and access journalism has taken care of that.

I have no doubt Willy is right about the moral quality of business leadership. And, the moral quality of business followership, too. The fish rots from the head. Boeing. Intel. Google. Boars Head. The Democratic Party. Many stories; the same story.

The functional cohesion of a society depends on the institutional capacity to discipline the sociopaths with the possibility of scandal, humiliation, scorn and ruin, but scandal, humiliation, scorn and ruin can be visited on anyone. Once the sociopaths have control of the mechanisms to wield injustice and rationalize the harms inflicted, the society has lost its ability to govern itself. “Democratically” or in any other way where conscience or factual accuracy can be made to matter to and thru public opinion.

For an idealist, I think I have a sufficiently cynical outlook to appreciate the practical usefulness of “messy”. I recognize that we make somewhat arbitrary rules to protect ourselves and each other in circumstances of unavoidable ignorance and uncertainty and the rules, such as they are, inevitably get in the way. Ambivalence about the rules and arguments over reform and innovation seem an inevitable byproduct of pervasive uncertainty and human conflicts of interest and perspective. What bothers me most about our political moment is the extent to which the governing power seems lodged in a blob that does not answer its critics and is profoundly dishonest in its dictation of narratives.

I do not know much of my own responsibility and observation about COVID-19 or the mRNA vaccines, with regard to the biology or medical science. But, I have observed enough of the political dishonesty, incompetence and irresponsibility to distrust deeply. And, to feel that what has gone on in those domains — including journalism and institutional science — is of a piece with what we have witnessed in other domains.

The only rational voices left are all marginalized, many to the point of being threatened with jail. It is illegal now to express an opinion in the U.K.

The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist’s Warning:

https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Rise-Anti-science-Scientists-Warning/dp/1421447223

Dr. Peter Hotez discusses how the antivaccine movement became a dangerous political campaign promoted by elected officials and amplified by news media, causing thousands of American deaths.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, one renowned scientist, in his famous bowtie, appeared daily on major news networks such as MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, and others. Dr. Peter J. Hotez often went without sleep, working around the clock to develop a nonprofit COVID-19 vaccine and to keep the public informed. During that time, he was one of the most trusted voices on the pandemic and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his selfless work. He also became one of the main targets of anti-science rhetoric that gained traction through conservative news media.

In this eyewitness story of how the anti-vaccine movement grew into a dangerous and prominent anti-science element in American politics, Hotez describes the devastating impacts it has had on Americans’ health and lives. As a scientist who has endured antagonism from anti-vaxxers and been at the forefront of both essential scientific discovery and advocacy, Hotez is uniquely qualified to tell this story. By weaving his personal experiences together with information on how the anti-vaccine movement became a tool of far-right political figures around the world, Hotez opens readers’ eyes to the dangers of anti-science. He explains how anti-science became a major societal and lethal force: in the first years of the pandemic, more than 200,000 unvaccinated Americans needlessly died despite the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines. Even as he paints a picture of the world under a shadow of aggressive ignorance, Hotez demonstrates his innate optimism, offering solutions for how to combat science denial and save lives in the process.

I don’t know. That’s my mantra.
Fourth of July, corn knee high.
That’s what a corn grower’s looking for.
Lotsa rockers from intel/military families.
Jim Morrison’s daddy was an admiral as I recall.
But memory fails as I fade away.
The Grateful Dead. Ha ha.
Never attended a concert, but spent some intimate time with the ex wife of a band member over some lost weekends and heard lots of stories.
So I don’t know, but I’ve been told. . .

To err is human, to forgive divine, but even Shakespeare’s endured abuse over the ages.
Maybe it’s time the Petri dish of this human experience got tossed.
But then who’s going to feed the dogs?
Never mind.

-Ad hominem’s
-Appeal to authority
-Refusal to address opponents
-Support censorship
-Refusal to provide evidence
-Inability to engage in the topic without making it personal
-Undisclosed Conflicts of interest
-Cherry picking
-Refusal to denounce fraud/fraudsters
-Haven’t even read the studies done by their own side
-Support discriminating and denying opponents healthcare, access to public locations, and employment

Doesn’t matter how many times people protest too much about being so virtuous, caring, Harding working, Good Samaritan’s and the smartest people in the world . Their actions tell us everything we need to know that the science they refuse to discuss or read already told us.

For an idealist, I think I have a sufficiently cynical outlook to appreciate the practical usefulness of “messy”.

But messy only works if most people play by rules. When I was a small child, whenever a playmate became so enraged about not getting their way that ad hominem became their only argument, an adult would step in and make them sit in a corner until they calmed down. Today, it seems many adults only care about the rules when it benefits them personally. I’d almost call them adult children. And don’t even get me started on how personal stress impacts ones need for cognitive closure.

At least I think that’s what you’re saying.

But I still see the same amount of respect for majority opinions, whatever they are, out there. Amount, not quality. The way things are, I don’t think I’ll be walking all steampunk cowboy down a gangsta hood street, peacefully, anytime soon. But in places like this? Maybe, for the time being.

I studied that once. The whole fads and bandwagons thing is a result of the majority of people being hardwired to ‘conform or be cast out’. (Lifeson claims only social libertarianism and is economically leftist) That majority forms the ballast of society, for good or bad. They’re the reason why we have to deal with stuff like Overton Windows. They’re why Vikings once wore battle-damaged pirate helmets, and their descendants sport floppy woolen caps, sometimes with a big puffy ball on top.

As a self-designated free-thinking oddball, when it comes to vaccines and medications,
I think it’s possible to hold the opinion that just because I’m paranoid about big pharma, doesn’t mean their products are always going to get me as long as I have a good lawyer. That Republicans allowed legal immunity while at the very same time loudly proclaiming vaccine freedoms, is concerning. Such beliefs held together only seem to only benefit big pharma.

Am I the only one who smells fish from the following historical incident.
The incident is the downing of a Ukrainian Passanger Aircraft, filled mostly with Canadians of Iranian backgrounds flying from Iran to Canada, by the Iranian military, a few days after the death of the Iranian General Solemani
It is reported that after the aircraft took off it turned around to return to Tehran.
But there must not be any rabbit hole to go down because the Iranian government itself tried and convicted 2 Iranian Air Defence Officers of neglegence.
I am not Canadian. So, Maybe I missed it. But I have never seen a single conspiracy theory advanced online about this incident.
Of course I am not saying that every strange and important event has to have been the result of an underlying conspiracy. There is also the problem of determining whether or not an event is strange or important. That is not a yes or no assessment of course. It is more a matter of degrees.
But I am none the less surprised that this event faded so quixkly from the world stage. Neither Symore Hirsh or The Grey Zone ever did a follow up on the lack of a story.

@dc

all I can judge is what I see and hear when I have seen him on teevee

hey, in 2023 Hotez won the Anthony Fauci Courage in Leadership Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, so he must be A-OK!

@ Bruce Wilder,

Does what you see and hear from/about Hotez on teevee have something to do with the quality of his science or the quality of his vaccine or its fate?

Is his winning of the Fauci Prize any more relevant to the quality of his science and/or vaccine than Colonel Summers’s remarks to General Giáp about America never losing a battle to the NVA were relevant to the fact of America’s surrender?

@ Oakchair,

Thank you for actually answering the actual question with an actual answer. That at least gives me or anyone else something to look into relative to the actual question.
So thanks again for providing a relevant answer to the actual question.