Category Archives: Of Interest

Who Holds the Thunderbolts Now?

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ASSASSINATION BY LIGHTNING
Cosmic War

ASSASSINATION BY LIGHTNING

September 24, 2020 By Joseph P. Farrell

Lately, as you can tell, I’ve been blogging about Sudden Animal Deaths, the decline of insect populations, and so on. And I’ve been entertaining the idea  for some time that these deaths might be due to the unintended consequences of increased environmental ambient electromagnetic radiation, or in some cases, as the deliberate result of the tests of electromagnetically based exotic weaponry. With respect to the latter hypothesis, I’ve entertained it with regard to the sudden deaths of whole flights of birds in mid-air, and – in an entirely different context – with respect to some of the anomalous photos and videos witnesses have gathered from fires in Australia and California. In regard to the latter, I’ve even gone so far as to suggest that the power grid itself might have been weaponized as the broadcast antenna for the fires by simply sending transients through the wires and into homes. With respect to the recent sudden death of a herd of elephants in Africa, I’ve entertained the idea of a lightning weapons test.

Yea, I know all this sounds nutty, and it probably is.

But the nuttiness isn’t mine. It belongs to “them”, you know, the guys that sit around and dream all this stuff up. “N.” found this article and passed it along (our thanks!), and it’s worth absorbing, because it’s not coming from an “alternative media” source, but from Forbes magazine:

When The CIA Considered Weaponizing Lightning

Here’s what has leaped out at me:

Thunderbolts are traditionally the weapon of the gods, but in 1967 the CIA were wondering whether they, too, could call down bolts of lightning from the heavens at will.

The idea is contained in a proposal from a scientist, sent to the CIA’s Deputy for Research ‘Special Activities’ and passed on to the chief of the Air Systems division. The scientist’s name has been redacted in the declassified document from the CIA’s archive, but the proposal mentions a previous discussion with the CIA, indicating they were being taken seriously.

The guided lightning concept is based on the observation that lightning follows a path of ionized air known as a step leader. Once the leader stroke reaches the ground and makes a circuit, the lightning proper is formed and a current flow, typically around 300 million Volts at 30,000 Amps.

The scientist suggests that artificial leaders could “cause discharges to occur when and where we want them.” The artificial leader would be a wire a few thousandths of an inch in diameter and several miles long. Wires would be inserted into storms by aircraft or rockets on a spool, and unrolled by a drogue parachute, and lightning would follow them down to the ground.

“This method is possible because the main discharge will occur through ionized surrounding the wire,” notes the scientist. The wire, like the leader, is only needed to get the lightning going, and would still work even if it broke.

Now let’s dive into today’s high octane speculation. If you’ve been following the phenomenon of “chemtrails” and the spraying being conducted, one of the things you’ll have come across is the claim that much of the material being sprayed is particulate heavy metals. Sometimes the composition of this spray varies, but among the metals most often mentioned in this regard are aluminum, and barium. Sometimes there are others. In some examinations, the spraying began during the Reagan era as a secretive effort to increase the electrical conductivity of the atmosphere for his Strategic Defense Initiative project. This needed a “cover story,” so in some versions, the spraying was being done to “save the environment” or to “combat climate change” (which explanation in itself is intriguing, because that implied the ability to manipulate weather on a planetary scale).

As the article itself notes, the use of wires was intended to provide a channel for lightning to close the circuit between the atmosphere and the ground, but that it “would still work even if it broke.” In other words, you do not need a long wire, but several short ones in close proximity to each other to provide a channel or circuit for the lightning. Like particulate aerosolized heavy metals…

The next thing one needs is the ability to create the large charge differentials to be able to cause lightning to strike, otherwise that sheath of heavy metals might function to block such strikes like a big Faraday cage, though in my opinion this possibility is unlikely for a variety of reasons. In any case, one needs an ability to ionize the atmosphere sufficiently to build up these enormous charges, or to take a naturally occurring storm, and load more energy into it. Enter the ionosphere heaters like HAARP. Indeed, when this technology was being dreamed up and patented – incidentally, during Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative era – some of the uses claimed for it were weather modification and steering, missile defense, and some analysts also made good cases that it could be used to cause lightning strikes.

In other words, the USA had, and has had, this capability since at least the 1980s, and probably now many other nations as well. Put the two together – the spraying and the heaters – and one would have the equivalent, perhaps, of the ability to bombard a region or  area with lightning, a kind of “carpet bombing with lightning”, and to coin a pun, a true and proper Blitz.

Obviously, carpet bombing with lightning isn’t exactly “assassination” in any classical sense. For that, one would need some means for precision strikes, not just an aerosolized region and lightning strikes to start forest fires. One would need some means to be able to dial someone up, or at least, locate them, and use whatever such device that might be providing that location, to pulse it and them.

Yea… I know. It sounds nutty. And probably is.

But… while you’re reading this on your ipad, remember that the first two essential requirements have been around since the 1980s at least, and the weaponized lightning idea since at least 1967, if not long before that, with the lightning bolts of the gods, who may not have been gods at all, but just people with an extraordinarily sophisticated science. After all, the ability to call down lightning strikes at a specific point would certainly impress a bunch of hairless monkeys who were still using bows and arrows to accomplish their mischief.

See you on the flip side…

from:    https://gizadeathstar.com/2020/09/assassination-by-lightning/#comment-102827

Playing the Numbers Game

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Dr. Atlas Breaks Down the REAL COVID-19 Numbers on The Ingraham Angle — Rebukes CDC Director Dr. Redfield on Scare Tactics (VIDEO)

By Joe Hoft
Published September 25, 2020

Trump Coronavirus advisor Dr. Scott Atlas claims COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations and emergency room visits are down to levels not seen since the beginning of the crisis. 

On Thursday Dr. Atlas was forced to correct CDC Director Robert Redfield’s inaccurate and partial truths on the current coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Redfield continues to mislead the American public.

Dr. Atlas is very confident with the information he is sharing.

The Washington Examiner reported yesterday:

Dr. Scott Atlas, the Stanford radiologist-turned-White House adviser, accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield of “misstating” coronavirus data Wednesday.

“I think that Dr. Redfield misstated something there,” Atlas said, referring to Redfield’s testimony before the Senate Wednesday in which he said that 90% of the population remains susceptible to COVID-19.

“When you look at the CDC data state by state, much of that data is old, some of it goes back to March or April, before many of these states have the cases,” Atlas said. He added that people also may have other forms of immunity to the virus beyond the kind Redfield referred to.

Atlas, formerly a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, joined the White House in August. Since then, he’s appeared with President Trump at press conferences, while other public health officials, such as Redfield and coronavirus task force members Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, have not.

Rep. Andy Biggs agrees that Dr. Atlas lays out the facts unlike others who presented whatever their agenda called for at the time:

Dr. Atlas shared that hospitalizations are down, deaths are down, people entering the emergency rooms with COVID are down.  These are very positive trends.

Dr. Atlas was on with Laura Ingraham on Thursday night.
This was a very important interview.

from:    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/09/dr-atlas-claims-covid-19-deaths-hospitalizations-emergency-room-visits-levels-not-seen-since-beginning-crisis/?ff_source=Twitter&ff_campaign=websitesharingbuttons

A Little Glyphosate with that Coke?

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Science Institute Protects Interests of Big Food, Not Public Health, Researchers Say

By Jeremy Loffredo

An investigation by academics, journalists and public interest researchers reveals a web of corporate money and industry-funded science surrounding the nonprofit organization International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). ILSI describes itself as a network of think-tanks, science societies and institutes that promote food safety and nutrition. However, as research group U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) asserts, ILSI is a “food industry lobbying group” that works to benefit its corporate donors despite its proclaimed mission of improving “human health and well-being.”

USRTK details the revolving door between the ILSI and industry, which goes as far back as the organization’s foundation in 1978. It was started by former Coca-Cola executive Alex Malaspina, and as USRTK points out, the nonprofit has maintained its close ties to Coca-Cola. For example, Michael Ernest Knowles, president of ILSI from 2009-2011, hailed from Coca-Cola where he was the vice president of global scientific and regulatory affairs. As another example, ILSI’s president in 2015, Rhona Applebaum, was, at the same time, working as Coca-Cola’s chief health and science officer. Applebaum was forced to retire from both positions after reports showed that Coke funded and edited the mission statement of a prominent anti-obesity advocacy group in an effort to shift public conversation away from criticism of the effects of sugary drinks and instead blame the lack of physical activity on childhood obesity.

But, as noted in this recent study, sugary drinks are to blame for this epidemic. Researchers from the Medical University of Vienna looked at 20 studies addressing the link between sugary sweetened drinks and obesity in children and adults. Of all the studies, 93% concluded that there was a “positive association” between the onset of overweight or obesity and the consumption of sugary drinks in children and adults. Other research has found positive association between sugary drinks and cancer.

USRTK highlights ILSI’s influence on domestic health officials, in the U.S. and abroad. The report highlights the example of Chinese health officials, noting that ILSI-Chinese operations are actually located inside China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention offices in Beijing. USRTK notes Harvard Professor Susan Greenhalgh findings, which show that Western food and beverage corporations have helped shape decades of Chinese science and public policy on obesity and diet by operating through ILSI.

Greenhalgh explains, “Since 2015, when The New York Times exposed Coke’s efforts to promote activity as the main solution for obesity, we’ve known that Coke was involved in distorting the science of obesity. My work reveals the scale of the impact and the inner workings of the organizations involved,” which includes ILSI.

The researchers also shows how ILSI takes money directly from food and chemical companies. While ISLI does not publicly disclose its funding from industry, researchers were able to find a $500,000 contribution from Monsanto in 2012 and more than $163,500 from Coca-Cola the same year.

In 2013, the ILSI received $337,000 from Coca-Cola and more than $100,000 each from corporations like Monsanto, Dow Chemical and Bayer.

A draft of ILSI’s 2016 tax returns also reveals hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from giants such as Nestle, Kellogg, Kraft, General Mills and Unilever.

USRTK notes that these monetary contributions can affect global health policy. In 2016, the United Nations panel on Monsanto’s chemical glyphosate was chaired by ILSI Europe Vice President Alan Boobis. Co-chairing the sessions was Angelo Moretto, an ILSI board member. Neither individual declared their ILSI leadership roles as conflicts of interest, despite the significant financial contributions ILSI has received from Monsanto.

What’s more, USRTK points out that these monetary contributions can be earmarked for specific initiatives. Coca-Cola earmarked its ILSI contributions to fund the organization’s “Platform for International Partnerships,” which manages its relationships with regulatory bodies like the World Health Organization. USRTK then references a June 2019 paper in Globalization and Health, which explains that corporations deploy ILSI “as a tool to promote their interests globally.” Researchers further demonstrate the existence of a nonprofit industrial complex, where “science institutes” like ILSI serve as a vehicle for corporate influence, at the expense of objective science and public health.

from:    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/international-life-sciences-institute-protects-big-food-not-public-health/?itm_term=home

Another Look at the Germ Theory

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Andrew Kaufman, MD: The Pandemic Fraud Runs Deeper Than You Think

Andrew Kaufman, MD, is credentialed in biology, medicine, oncology, and psychiatry. He says there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of a “pandemic” that is being used to frighten and intimidate people. He says he has uncovered an even bigger fraud that applies to all viral illnesses and, if he is right, the germ theory of disease will need to be scrapped and replaced by the terrain theory. Since that would be the end of the vaccine industry, we expect Hell to be be unleashed against Dr. Kaufman, not to challenge his theory on the basis of science, but to attack him as a person. Dr. Kaufman will be presenting his findings at G. Edward Griffin’s Red Pill Expo to be held at Jekyll Island, Georgia, October 10 and 11. Information about the Expo at Jekyll Island, Georgia, and about the live stream of the event is available at: https://redpillexpo.org/ -GEG

”

from:   https://needtoknow.news/2020/09/andrew-kaufman-md-the-pandemic-fraud-runs-deeper-than-you-think/
(If the video does not play, go to the link to see it.)

Dr. Atlas — Now the Weight of the World Is Truly Upon You

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Memo to Dr. Scott Atlas, new White House coronavirus advisor

He’s already made two forward-looking points: positive PCR tests in asymptomatic people mean nothing; and the only way to establish mass immunity is through mass exposure out in the open, not lockdowns.

by Jon Rappoport.     September 8, 2020

Scott,

Where to begin? No new virus was ever shown to exist via proper proof. Worthless diagnostic test. Sixteen ways case and death numbers are being faked. If there were a virus, the only way to stop it would be through open massive public exposure and the gaining of natural immunity. Therefore, no lockdowns, no masks, no distancing, no vast economic destruction under the watch of a president whose whole program was based on expanding the economy. Is that enough for starters?

I’d really like to know what went on the room, back in March, when Fauci walked in with Neil Ferguson’s preposterous computer predictions of COVID deaths in the US and spoke with Trump.

Did no one bring up the fact that Ferguson’s whole career has been a string of failed predictions? Was there zero due diligence? Did some economic advisor open his mouth and tell the president what a long-term lockdown would do to the economy? Fifty million people unemployed? Well over a million businesses destroyed?

I hope you understand that Moderna is Fauci’s favorite vaccine company, and his agency, NIAID, stands to rake in cash if Moderna’s shot turns out to be the choice for COVID—when, in fact, no vaccine is necessary.

I hope you know Moderna is a little punk firm that has never brought a product of any kind to market, and yet garnered $500 million in fed funds to research a vaccine.

On top of that, Moderna is deploying RNA technology, which has never been approved for any pharmaceutical product, and has caused, in trials, serious adverse effects.

Are you aware the NY Times recently reported on a large study showing up to 90 percent of all US COVID cases have been false positives, owing to the extreme sensitivity of the PCR test? Not enough virus present in humans to harm a flea. No likelihood of contagion, either.

Have you read the results of a New York study revealing patients over the age of 65 who are put on ventilators die at the staggering rate of 97.2 percent? Yet, Cuomo and Trump keep pushing ventilators.

COVID is old people. Period. No virus necessary. They’re all suffering from long-term, multiple, serious health conditions. They’ve all been treated, for years, with toxic medical drugs. They’re terrified at the possibility of a COVID diagnosis. Then they are diagnosed with COVID. Then they’re isolated and cut off from family and friends. And they die. NO VIRUS NECESSARY.

And THAT makes the recent CDC revelation about death numbers more relevant than most people can fathom. The CDC states that only 6 percent of all US COVID deaths have been unambiguously caused by a virus alone. The other 94 percent are overwhelmingly the old people I just described. Get it?

And now comes a new group of lunatics—computer modelers from the University of Washington, who are predicting the US death toll from COVID will rise above 600,000 this winter. Pressed into their amateur thickly sliced baloney—they ignore the CDC “correction” of death numbers I just mentioned.

Do not let the White House buy this latest death-number projection. Tell Trump one unimaginable screw-up (accepting Ferguson’s criminal projection) is quite enough.

Gather up your forces, Scott. Talk to Dr. John Ioannidis and his merry band of colleagues who tried to get through to Trump and failed, just before you were appointed coronavirus advisor.

Bring the house. You know Fauci and Gates and their sub-honchos are angling for another serious lockdown this winter, when they’re going to make every possible case of flu-like illness over into COVID.

You accepted the White House invite. You bought the ticket, now take the ride. The full ride. Don’t stint.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is an operation to wreck economies worldwide. The preposterous virus narrative is the cover story, concealing the objective of the actual war.

Don’t let the DC attack dogs back you into a corner and shut you up.

You have nothing to lose but your reputation in the eyes of people who don’t matter. They’ve already taken you off their dance card.

The country could lose itself.

In this situation, there is no defense. There is only offense.

If they kick you to the curb, you can come and work with us. You don’t get paid, but the one perk is enormous. You get to define the terms of the battle. And oh yes, you don’t have to speak with numbskulls, hustlers, shysters, and sociopaths.

from:    https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/09/08/memo-to-dr-scott-atlas-new-white-house-coronavirus-advisor/

Card-ing Your Way Out of Police Stops

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pba cards courtesy cards
Images from Getty, Shutterstock, and Katie Way  | Collage by Cathryn Virginia
Identity

The Little Cards That Tell Police ‘Let’s Forget This Ever Happened’

Some cops give their friends and family union-issued “courtesy cards” to help get them out of minor infractions. The cards embody everything wrong with modern policing.
KW
September 2, 2020,

 

 

Mike, a white man in his 50s, was in a bad spot: He was stuck idling in traffic on New York City’s Riverside Drive, running late for a meeting, and he needed to get to the Upper East Side pronto. Hopping on the shoulder to bypass the other cars wasn’t the right thing to do, he told VICE, but he’d seen other people get away with it before.

Mike, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, said he knew it was risky—especially because the borrowed car he was driving didn’t have a license plate, let alone a registration under his name. He decided to roll the dice anyway. Right away, bad news: a traffic checkpoint, and cops pulling people over.

“That was probably the tightest spot I could’ve been in,” Mike said. “Because [the offense] could’ve been ‘driving without a plate,’ ‘driving with no registration…’” By driving on the shoulder, too, Mike was driving illegally in at least three different ways.

Despite that, he felt confident as the cop approached his car and told him to roll down his window. Instead of pulling out his driver’s license, Mike simply introduced himself and produced something better. “I just basically happened to have one of their PBA cards on me,” he said, referring to the small, plastic “courtesy” cards issued by the Police Benevolent Association, which usually have an officer’s name, phone number, and signature on the back.

The cards are designed to be presented in a low-stakes police encounter, like a traffic stop, as a laminated wink-and-nudge between officers that says, “Hey, would you mind going a little easy on this one?” When a cop is handed a PBA card, they can call the number on it to verify the relationship between the cardholder and the issuer, then decide whether it means they should give the cardholder a break.

According to Mike, the officer looked at the card, then let him go without asking for ID or the car’s registration. “By knowing somebody and having that connection, it worked,” Mike said.  …

Though Mike’s story may seem like it comes from a less-scrutinized, outdated era of law enforcement, PBA cards are still used and accepted in the present, without much oversight. They serve as a physical example of how cops are able to exercise the law largely as they feel, personally, is right.

…

According to John Driscoll, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, PBA cards aren’t quite carte blanche to flout the law. Driscoll, a former NYPD officer himself, told VICE that, in his experience, the cards are most likely to work in one’s favor during traffic stops for minor infractions, like speeding or a busted tail light—and not in more serious cases, like drunk driving.

When a PBA card is presented, it’s up to the officer how they want to factor it into a stop. “Some officers, I think they’d summons their own mother,” Driscoll said. “The card doesn’t mean anything to them. Other people [are less that way]; we have wide discretion when it comes to issuing summonses, so officers exercise that all the time,” he said, in order to let PBA cardholders off the hook for minor infractions if they so choose.

Screen Shot 2020-08-08 at 11.47.37 AM 2.png

Screenshot via eBay

…But because cops can also use discretion to over-apply the law violently to vulnerable populations, PBA cards and the privileges they confer are darkly emblematic of how certain people are favored in situations in which others are endangered or hurt by police.

The existence of these cards is a concrete example of a larger, often more insidious problem in American policing: Discretionary decision-making allows police to pick and choose who the law really applies to—and who gets a pass.

…Black Americans have filed lawsuits against police officers in Aurora, Colorado, and Shreveport, Louisiana, alleging discriminatory and violent treatment during broken taillight stops, fortunately without deadly consequences.

In 2015, Sandra Bland was pulled over in Prairie View, Texas, for failing to signal while changing lanes; after a state trooper threatened her with a stun gun, Bland was taken into custody, where she was found dead three days later. There are many other accounts of police choosing violence against the people they pull over for minor traffic infractions, particularly if they aren’t white.

To illustrate how discretion permeates issues of policing large and small, David Correia, an associate professor at the University of New Mexico and co-author of Police: A Field Guide, also pointed to over-policing in the “crime-infested” neighborhoods overwhelmingly populated by Black and brown people living at or below the poverty line; and the proven inability of so-called “chokehold bans” to curb the police use of chokeholds.

…

In practice, Correia and Wall said those who are able to “get off easy” from an encounter with the police typically look and act a lot like Mike, an affable white person who respects police authority and is careful to address them with friendly deference—to act the part of the sheepish, apologetic innocent who understands that the cop is “just doing their job.” (And, given the publicly available data on the demographics of the NYPD and New Jersey state police, the majority of police issuing cards are likely white officers.)

…Officer discretion is at the core of modern policing—it vests cops with the power to choose if, when, how, to whom, and to what extent they will apply the law. The school resource officers who handcuff disabled children for acting out in class are free to do so because they’ve determined, using discretion, that it is necessary. The cop who returned a scared, naked teenager to Jeffrey Dahmer after the 14-year-old boy escaped the murderer’s house? Also exercising discretion.

Literature on discretion that’s favorable to the police effectively states that this decision-making power can’t be limited, because to do so would curb their ability to react in the moment and enforce the law. …

Kelling goes on to advocate for training that teaches cops about how to think, rather than how to act, in the field—how to identify disorder and criminal potential, without placing firm limits on how to act once a supposed threat is identified. This mindset has unsurprisingly been linked to racial profiling and the criminalization of unhoused populations, something Kelling himself expressed concerns about.

…

Cops have serious social incentives to respect PBA cards—the way they handle being presented with one reflects the respect they have for a fellow officer. This dynamic is demonstrated with surprising accuracy, Driscoll said, in a storyline of The Sopranos.

In the 2001 episode “Another Toothpick,” Tony Soprano brandishes a New Jersey State PBA card when a Black police officer pulls him over for speeding. “I think I had dinner with your boss last week,” Soprano says slyly as he flashes the card (which bears the name of real-life former PBA president Michael J. Madonna).

After a tense exchange, the officer tickets Soprano anyway. A few scenes later, Soprano runs into the cop working at a garden supply store: Once word of his refusal to let Soprano off the hook got back to his superiors, the cop’s hours were cut and he was forced to get a second job to recoup the lost income.

“I love The Sopranos,” Driscoll said. “I laughed at that one!” But he said the potential disrespect communicated by ignoring a fellow cop’s PBA card was no joke.

…

Police unions tend to be tight-lipped when it comes to discussing PBA cards. The phenomenon is mentioned in the media as early as 1936, in a profile of a former police commissioner in the New Yorker, and references to PBA cards continued to crop up in New York–area newspapers throughout the 20th century, generally in connection with forgery and extortion. One motorcycle patrolman died by suicide after he was found guilty of distributing fraudulent courtesy cards. But for the most part, you’d be hard pressed to get a cop (or even a PBA cardholder) to discuss the custom in detail.

Because of this silence, it’s tough to get a read on how many PBA cards there are in circulation, and who exactly is holding them.

—

To Wall, though, courtesy cards are just the opposite: They’re “a window into the larger maze” of the foundational principles of policing, like discretion, that make the entire institution so unreformable. He believes they reflect the biases, prejudices, and institutionally supported pecking order of policing on the whole.

“Policing was never meant to be held accountable in the first place, not in a meaningful, substantial way,” Wall said. He cautioned against focusing too much on the injustice of PBA cards. “Be careful that the outrage [doesn’t] become directed in too narrow a way. The real outrage should be directed at the nature of policing itself.”

Correction: This story originally stated that David Correia is an associate professor at the University of Mexico. He is actually an associate professor at the University of New Mexico. We regret the error.

Follow Katie Way on Twitter.

from:    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gxa4/pba-card-police-courtesy-cards?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Sweden UnMasked

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September 4, 2020 TLB Staff

ER Editor: Sweden won, hands down. Why is this so hard to accept? Why another fake, non-problem over the wearing of masks?

To recap:

  • REAL CASES of actually sick people were declining BEFORE lockdown in March;
  • the lockdown wasn’t necessary therefore, just massively destructive;
  • there’s been no second wave;
  • new ‘cases’ are just healthy people with trace amounts of coronavirus RNA in their systems. And it’s summer. So now masks must be the new bone of contention. And this isn’t going away.

Today on Twitter we came across this short video clip, probably taken in the north-west of England (Liverpool region) on public transport judging by the accents. The police officer is a member of the British Transport Police. Yet if you live in Wales, apparently masks aren’t compulsory there. What gives???

TWEET FROM SIMON DOLAN

It is noteworthy in the AFP piece cited below that Nordic countries except Sweden changed their mask policy in … MID-SUMMER.

********

No mandatory masks in Sweden, yet contamination continues to drop!

LE LIBRE PENSEUR

The question greatly perturbs and disturbs the pro-maskers: why does Sweden, a country of more than 10 million inhabitants, not require the wearing of masks, not lockdown and yet have fewer deaths and a significant drop in contagiousness and new cases? Moreover, how can we blame them since they’ve only followed WHO recommendations!

In reality, this has an important relationship with the principle of herd immunity because they have let the virus circulate, so a large part of the population must be immunized.

The same is true in Germany, where masks are not compulsory in schools either, and yet the country has managed its epidemic much better than France. Some Landers impose it in the corridors but not in the classroom, which demonstrates once again the absurdity of such an approach since the pupils stay very little time in the corridors and whole hours in the classrooms.

One thing is certain, this pandemic has shown us just how crazy our leaders are…

****

(ER: This report comes from AFP, which we issue an MSM warning for!)

In a masked Europe, Sweden once again goes it alone. But unlike many European countries that are seeing an upsurge in new cases, such as France, the Netherlands, Germany or Belgium, the data for Sweden has been declining since June.

Sweden, which has attracted attention with its less strict strategy against the coronavirus, finds itself once again isolated in its fight against the epidemic, continuing for the time being to sulk the mask.

While Paris has made it mandatory to wear a mask in all its streets, in Stockholm, few wear it in supermarkets, offices, buses and subways. Only a handful bend to its use.

Instructions for social distancing and regular hand washing

If the Swedish health authorities consider it insufficiently effective, they insist on social distancing and regular handwashing.

“I find it a bit strange. In Sweden, which is a small country, they think they know better than the rest of the world,” says Jenny Ohlsson, manager of an accessory store in the Swedish capital, where you can find all kinds of colorful fabric masks. (ER: Why would AFP, to give a ‘contrary view’, interview a lady, a non-medical person, who makes her living from selling masks? This is extremely poor journalism.)

Unlike the arrangements imposed in the rest of Europe, Sweden has not confined its population and has kept its cafés, bars, restaurants and businesses open, asking everyone to “take responsibility”.

A questionable balance sheet but declining figures

The toll is questionable: with more than 5,800 deaths and 84,000 cases, Sweden is among the most affected countries in relation to its population.

But, unlike many European countries that are experiencing a resurgence of new cases, such as France, the Netherlands, Germany or Belgium, the data for Sweden has been declining since June.

The dangers of the mask?

Faced with this trend, health authorities see no reason to change their strategy, including with regard to masks, for the moment.

Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, the face of this assumed Swedish strategy, considers that its effectiveness remains to be proven. Misused or mishandled, the mask could also contaminate the person wearing it, he defends.

“There are at least three weighty reports, from the World Health Organization, the ECDC (European Health Agency) and The Lancet that the WHO cites, all of which state that the scientific evidence is weak,” explains the researcher.

KK Cheng, an epidemiologist at the Birmingham Institute of Applied Health Research, denounces the logic of the “irresponsible” and “stubborn” approach.

“If those who think like him are wrong, it costs lives. But if I’m wrong, what harm does it do? “pleads this proponent of wearing the mask.

Improvement of conditions in retirement homes

Anders Tegnell prefers to emphasize the decline in numbers since the improvement of conditions in retirement homes, which recorded a large number of deaths at the beginning of the epidemic, combined with increased compliance with recommendations such as teleworking.

“Trying to replace these measures with masks won’t work,” he says. “Several countries that have introduced masks are now experiencing a sharp upsurge,” he told public television in mid-August.

Nordic neighbors turn around

If Sweden’s northern neighbors have long avoided wearing masks, they all changed course in mid-summer. (ER: And the question should be why, since respiratory viruses lose significant power during summer months in mid-latitude countries? Who is pushing this policy on these governments?)

Finland now recommends the wearing of masks in public places, Norway advises it on public transport in its capital Oslo, and Denmark has made it mandatory on public transport and cabs.

In June, some twenty doctors and researchers signed an op-ed piece in the daily newspaper Aftonbladet asking Anders Tegnell and the Swedish Public Health Agency to reconsider health policy on masks.

Faced with this call, which has been regularly repeated since then, the authorities say they are “keeping an eye on” the issue and could introduce the measure if deemed necessary.

It remains to be seen whether the transmission of Covid-19 in Sweden will continue to decrease.

In front of Jenny Ohlsson’s mask store, Gilbert Sylwander, a 69-year-old Stockholmer, contemplates the choice of colors available to him.

The sexagenarian says he has confidence in the strategy led by the Swedish Public Health Agency.

What if he had to wear a mask tomorrow? “Of course I would,” he says, “just to be polite to others.”

from:    https://www.europereloaded.com/no-mandatory-masks-in-sweden-yet-contamination-continues-to-drop/masks mandatory masks

Sweden

Surgeries & Masks

Posted on by
Joseph P. Farrell says:
August 27, 2020 at 9:25 pm

For the “commenter” on the live feed chat who was snarkily asking about masks and surgeries, I urge you to consider the following:

Very interesting research: [Arthur Firstenberg is the author of *The Invisible Rainbow*].

Arthur Firstenberg on facial masks:
“As a person who went to medical school, I was shocked when I read Neil Orr’s study, published in 1981 in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Dr. Orr was a surgeon in the Severalls Surgical Unit in Colchester. And for six months, from March through August 1980, the surgeons and staff in that unit decided to see what would happen if they did not wear masks during surgeries.

They wore no masks for six months, and compared the rate of surgical wound infections from March through August 1980 with the rate of wound infections from March through August of the previous four years.

And they discovered, to their amazement, that when nobody wore masks during surgeries, the rate of wound infections was less than half what it was when everyone wore masks.

Their conclusion: ‘It would appear that minimum contamination can best be achieved by not wearing a mask at all’ and that wearing a mask during surgery ‘is a standard procedure that could be abandoned.’

I was so amazed that I scoured the medical literature, sure that this was a fluke and that newer studies must show the utility of masks in preventing the spread of disease.

But to my surprise the medical literature for the past forty-five years has been consistent: masks are useless in preventing the spread of disease and, if anything, are unsanitary objects that themselves spread bacteria and viruses.

• Ritter et al., in 1975, found that ‘the wearing of a surgical face mask had no effect upon the overall operating room environmental contamination.’

• Ha’eri and Wiley, in 1980, applied human albumin microspheres to the interior of surgical masks in 20 operations. At the end of each operation, wound washings were examined under the microscope. ‘Particle contamination of the wound was demonstrated in all experiments.’

• Laslett and Sabin, in 1989, found that caps and masks were not necessary during cardiac catheterization. ‘No infections were found in any patient, regardless of whether a cap or mask was used,’ they wrote. Sjøl and Kelbaek came to the same conclusion in 2002.

• In Tunevall’s 1991 study, a general surgical team wore no masks in half of their surgeries for two years. After 1,537 operations performed with masks, the wound infection rate was 4.7%, while after 1,551 operations performed without masks, the wound infection rate was only 3.5%.

• A review by Skinner and Sutton in 2001 concluded that ‘The evidence for discontinuing the use of surgical face masks would appear to be stronger than the evidence available to support their continued use.’

• Lahme et al., in 2001, wrote that ‘surgical face masks worn by patients during regional anaesthesia, did not reduce the concentration of airborne bacteria over the operation field in our study. Thus they are dispensable.’

• Figueiredo et al., in 2001, reported that in five years of doing peritoneal dialysis without masks, rates of peritonitis in their unit were no different than rates in hospitals where masks were worn.

• Bahli did a systematic literature review in 2009 and found that ‘no significant difference in the incidence of postoperative wound infection was observed between masks groups and groups operated with no masks.’

• Surgeons at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, recognizing the lack of evidence supporting the use of masks, ceased requiring them in 2010 for anesthesiologists and other non-scrubbed personnel in the operating room. ‘Our decision to no longer require routine surgical masks for personnel not scrubbed for surgery is a departure from common practice. But the evidence to support this practice does not exist,’ wrote Dr. Eva Sellden.

• Webster et al., in 2010, reported on obstetric, gynecological, general, orthopaedic, breast and urological surgeries performed on 827 patients. All non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries, and none of the non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries. Surgical site infections occurred in 11.5% of the Mask group, and in only 9.0% of the No Mask group.

• Lipp and Edwards reviewed the surgical literature in 2014 and found ‘no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials.’ Vincent and Edwards updated this review in 2016 and the conclusion was the same.

• Carøe, in a 2014 review based on four studies and 6,006 patients, wrote that ‘none of the four studies found a difference in the number of post-operative infections whether you used a surgical mask or not.’

• Salassa and Swiontkowski, in 2014, investigated the necessity of scrubs, masks and head coverings in the operating room and concluded that ‘there is no evidence that these measures reduce the prevalence of surgical site infection.’

• Da Zhou et al., reviewing the literature in 2015, concluded that ‘there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that face masks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination.’

Schools in China are now prohibiting students from wearing masks while exercising. Why? Because it was killing them. It was depriving them of oxygen and it was killing them. At least three children died during Physical Education classes — two of them while running on their school’s track while wearing a mask. And a 26-year-old man suffered a collapsed lung after running two and a half miles while wearing a mask.

Mandating masks has not kept death rates down anywhere. The 20 U.S. states that have never ordered people to wear face masks indoors and out have dramatically lower COVID-19 death rates than the 30 states that have mandated masks. Most of the no-mask states have COVID-19 death rates below 20 per 100,000 population, and none have a death rate higher than 55.

All 13 states that have death rates higher than 55 are states that have required the wearing of masks in all public places. It has not protected them.

‘We are living in an atmosphere of permanent illness, of meaningless separation,’ writes Benjamin Cherry in the Summer 2020 issue of New View magazine. A separation that is destroying lives, souls, and nature.”

Arthur Firstenberg
August 11, 2020

from:   https://gizadeathstar.com/2020/08/news-and-views-from-the-nefarium-august-27-2020/

Shutting Up Jiminy Cricket

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Face masks make you stupid

Why face masks are a form of dehumanisation

ARTILLERY ROW  By.  

In Joost Meerloo’s analysis of false confessions and totalitarian regimes, The Rape of the Mind, he coins a phrase for the ‘dumbing down’ of critical resistance – menticide. “In the totalitarian regime,” he wrote, “the doubting, inquisitive, and imaginative mind has to be suppressed. The totalitarian slave is only allowed to memorise, to salivate when the bell rings.”

Face masks make you suggestible; they make you more likely to follow someone else’s direction and do things you wouldn’t otherwise do

Neolithic man had a similar problem dealing with his livestock. Homo sapiens’ success has relied not insignificantly on cattle – their dairy, meat, leather and manure. Yet the cow’s ancestor, the auroch, was quite a different beast. It was fast, aggressive and dangerous – hardly conducive to be corralled into predictable channels of behaviour. So, about 10,500 years ago, man started to deliberately breed the most docile aurochs for domestication.

The key word here is docile, which comes from the Latin docere, meaning “to teach” (as does, say, ‘doctorate’ and ‘document’). Being docile means being compliant and following commands, which means submitting to a system of thought.

Whereas animals, however, typically need to be bred to have a higher level of reasoning to be taught commands, human beings, already being quite smart, need to be dumbed down. You won’t disobey an order if you lack the cognitive ability to question it. This is particularly pertinent to the smooth running of a modern world system which relies on millions of individual souls, each with their own nuanced life history and perspective, thinking and acting in the same way.

The empirical literature has shown that compliance and suggestibility are negatively related to intelligence (e.g., Gudjonsson, 1991). In consumer psychology, there is even a technique called ‘disrupt-then-reframe’: bamboozle people first and they’ll be more likely to buy what you’re selling (Davis & Knowles, 1999). Ultimately, the common denominator for increasing suggestibility is switching off executive function in the prefrontal cortex – disabling the superego, the conscience, the internal monologue. Without Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder, Pinocchio would never have become a real boy – he would have always remained a puppet. Modern society is shot through with things that make us similarly dumb (literally, unable to speak).

The effect of television, for example, as Meerloo wrote, is to “catch the mind directly, giving people no time for calm, dialectical conversation with their own minds.” The mind-numbing, irrational effect of visual communication has been recognised throughout history. Not for nothing did religions talk about the word of God and forbid graven images. Unsurprisingly, empirical studies showing that watching television makes you stupid in both the short- and long-term (Hoang et al., 2016; Lillard & Peterson, 2011). This is to say nothing of pornography, which is now consumed by 98% of men but known to inhibit the part of the brain dealing with conscience and consciousness, the prefrontal cortex (Kuhn & Gallinat, 2014).

Moving from circuses to bread, alcohol, of course, reduces cognitive function in the short-term (Hindmarch & Sherwood, 1991). Even at moderate levels of consumption, it accelerates cognitive decline in older age (Topiwala et al., 2017). Junk food, likewise, makes it harder to think in the short-term (Barnes & Joyner, 2012) and harms cognitive ability in the long-term (Reichelt & Rank, 2017).

Fluoride has become something of a cliché of conspiracy theorists; being added to the public water supply in multiple countries around the world, ostensibly to reduce tooth decay. However, the evidence supporting the dental benefits of fluoridated water is poor, while many studies have shown it can damage tooth aesthetics via fluorosis (McDonagh et al., 2000). Many more studies have found that fluoridated water lowers the population’s intelligence (e.g., Borman & Fyfe, 2013; Green et al., 2019; Lu et al., 2000; Rocha-Amador et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2008).

Which brings us to face masks.

Face masks can now be added to the list of mandates that make you stupid. As if Piers Morgan feverishly promoting them weren’t evidence enough, here are the facts on why you absolutely, categorically should not wear a face mask. They make you suggestible; they make you more likely to follow someone else’s direction and do things you wouldn’t otherwise do. In short, they switch off your executive function – your conscience.

A great example comes from a study by Mathes and Guest (1976), who asked participants how willing they would be, and how much they would have to be paid, to carry a sign around the university cafeteria reading “masturbation is fun” (this being 1976, doing such a thing would be considered embarrassing; these days it will probably earn you a course credit!). The results showed that when people wore a mask, they were more likely to carry the sign and required less money to do so ($30 compared to $48, on average).

Meanwhile, Miller and Rowold (1979) presented Halloween trick-or-treaters with a bowl of chocolates and told them they were allowed to take only two each. When the children thought they weren’t being watched, they helped themselves. Children without a mask broke the rule, taking more chocolates, 37% of the time, compared to 62% for masked children. The authors concluded that masks “lead to lower restraints on behaviour”.

The effect has similarly been found online: the online disinhibition effect refers to the tendency for people to act antisocially when anonymous online (Suler, 2004). There is even an infamous trolling movement calling itself Anonymous and using a mask as its symbol.

The disinhibiting effects of wearing a mask are described by psychologists in terms of a suspension of the superego’s control mechanisms, allowing subconscious impulses to take over. Saigre (1989) wrote that masks ‘short-cut’ conscious defence systems and encourage “massive regression” to a more primitive state; Castle (1986) wrote that eighteenth century masquerades allowed mask-wearers to release their repressed hedonistic and sexual impulses; and Caillois (1962) similarly wrote about European masked carnivals involving libidinal activities including “indecencies, jostling, provocative laughter, exposed breasts, mimicking buffoonery, a permanent incitement to riot, feasting and excessive talk, noise and movement”. In the 12th Century, Pope Innocent III banned masks as part of his fight against immorality; and in 1845, New York State made it illegal for more than two people to wear masks in public, after farmers wore masks to attack their landlords.

From a neuroimaging perspective, masks are known to inhibit identity and impulse control – both associated with executive function in the prefrontal cortex (e.g., Glannon, 2005; Tacikowski, Berger & Ehrsson, 2017). In other words, masks silence the Jiminy Cricket in the brain.

It is little wonder that covering our mouths would ‘shut us up’ psychologically. Studies have shown that clothing has a powerful effect on how we think (or not), via a principal known as enclothed cognition: wearing a lab coat enhances cognitive function (Adam & Galinsky, 2012), wearing a nurse’s scrubs increases empathy (López-Pérez et al., 2016), and wearing counterfeit brands increases the likelihood of cheating in a test (Gino, Norton & Ariely, 2010). Similarly, in the world of body language, someone putting their hand over their mouth is a sign that they are listening intently: they are ready to receive information, not to question it.

While no studies have looked at the effect of masks on verbal reasoning, it is fairly safe to assume that priming a ‘shutting up’ would have a cognitive effect. For example, extraverts are less compliant than introverts (Cohen et al., 2004; Gudjonsson et al., 2004); the development of conscience in humans is heavily linked to that of language (e.g., Arbib, 2006); and inner speech is highly related to cognitive functions (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, 2015). Crucially, verbal reasoning is strongly correlated with moral reasoning (e.g., Hayes, Gifford & Hayes, 1998): being unable to ‘speak’ makes one less able to deduce what is moral and immoral behaviour.

There is also a more basic reason masks might make you stupid: decreasing oxygen flow to the brain. Face veils reduce ventilatory function in the long-term (Alghadir, Aly & Zafar, 2012), and surgical masks may reduce blood oxygenation among surgeons (Beder et al., 2008): believe it or not, covering your mouth makes it harder to breathe. Reviewing the N95 face mask, a 2010 study (Roberge et al.) concluded that “carbon dioxide and oxygen levels were significantly above and below, respectively, the ambient workplace standards” inside the mask. A post-COVID study found that 81% of 128 previously-fit healthcare workers developed headaches as a result of wearing personal protective equipment (Ong et al., 2020).

Not only do face masks make it hard to breathe, but the evidence that they even work to stop the spread of coronavirus is limited at best. A popular brand of mask even carries a warning on its packaging that it “will not provide any protection against COVID-19”; as for preventing carriers from spreading the disease, a meta-analysis found, for example, that of eight randomised control trial studies, six found no difference in transmission rates between control and intervention groups (while one found that a combination of masks and handwashing is more effective than education alone, and the other found that N95 masks are more effective than standard surgical masks; bin-Reza et al., 2012). Non-surgical masks, such as scarfs and cloths, are almost useless (Rengasamy et al., 2010). Masks may even be unhealthy, causing a build-up of bacteria around the face (Zhiqing et al., 2018).

The fact that masks likely don’t even work brings us to the final reason that wearing one inculcates stupidity and compliance: through a bombardment of lies, contradictions, and confusion, the state overwhelms your ability to reason clearly.

As Theodore Dalrymple wrote, “In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”

The point of face masks is not to protect humans, but to diminish humanity – to rob people of their ego, their identity, and their autonomy. Masks are worn by disposable horror movie villains and ignorable background dancers; they make people less-than-human.

Dehumanisation is rarely followed by anything good. Face masks are another worrying portent of what’s to come, alongside a seismic shift in mainstream discourse. In an analysis of the Rwandan genocide, one of the first linguistic predictors was the tendency to look backwards, to blame, and to focus on past wrongs and injustices (Donohue, 2012), which will sound familiar to anyone unfortunate enough to have read The BBC or The Guardian recently. Similarly, where the Tutsis were referred to as cockroaches by the Hutus, and the Nazis depicted the Jews as rats, Nancy Pelosi recently promised to “fumigate” President Trump out of the White House.

It is hard to predict how the wheel of life will revolve in the coming years, but all signs point to trouble. During the crisis years of a generational cycle, only one thing can be guaranteed: the importance of a clear mind. To that end, allow yourself the dignity, identity and Logos of being human – and never, ever wear a mask.

https://thecritic.co.uk/face-masks-make-you-stupid/