200 Conscious People ARE Transforming Life On Earth (But Not For You...,)

caitlinjohnstone |  I write about humanity’s problems as a species in all sorts of ways in this space, but really if you want to get straightforward about things all we’re ever actually talking about here is a lack of awareness of what’s true and the need to eliminate that lack.

A lack of awareness is the source of all our major problems, whether we’re talking about war, poverty, ecocide, corruption, exploitation, authoritarianism, prejudice, or even much smaller-scale problems like abusive family dynamics or the psychological suffering of the individual.

If there were sufficiently widespread and penetrating awareness of the contributing factors in any of these problems, these problems would cease to exist. All you’d have left would be the odd natural disaster and the inevitability of sickness and death, which would also become far less problematic with the introduction of more awareness.

Yes, from a certain point of view it is true and accurate to say that many of our large-scale problems are due to the fact that humans whose brains lack functioning empathy centers are most well-equipped to manipulate their way into positions of power and influence, and that the amoral nature of capitalism ensures that it will be dominated by those willing to do whatever it takes to climb to the top. From a certain point of view it is true and accurate to say that our problems are caused by the fact that things like war, oppression, ecocide and exploitation will necessarily continue as long as our world is dominated by a system where those things are profitable and human behavior is driven by profit.

But it is also true that underlying every single part of the dynamics I just listed is a fundamental lack of human awareness.

If The Uniparty Doesn't Restore Narrative Hegemony, Vetted Obama-ite Politicians Will Be In Trouble

 CJR  |  You recently tweeted, “Stockton is the miner’s canary for the impact of disinformation,” describing the 209 Times as “an example of racism and disinfo that is able to thrive in news deserts.” So I’d like to open the floor for you to talk about news media coverage in Stockton, how it has changed over the years, and how this media landscape has allowed for disinformation to not only spread, but really thrive in your hometown.

So Stockton, California, is what’s called a news desert. Even before the layoffs and the cuts, we had one newspaper: the Stockton Record. In addition to that, despite being the twelfth-largest city in the state, sixty-second largest in the country, we weren’t our own media market. So all of our digital, broadcast media was homed in Sacramento, so they’d have to drive an hour to Stockton to shoot things. 

During my years as mayor, the Record had to lay off employees and stopped running as many articles. When the Record didn’t have as much staff to cover things, and subscriptions declined, at the same time, this fake-news site went up. Even when I was on city council, that was the play, just attacking the Record’s credibility all the time. “The Record’s corrupt,” “The Record’s elite,” “No one reads the Record”—and using elected officials to do that and to just question the legitimacy of an imperfect but also the only local press that we had in the city. Then when I became mayor, and after the success of former president Trump’s 2016 campaign utilizing social media and algorithms and weaponized information, these same folks got together and, in my first month as mayor, created what’s now known as the 209 Times. 

People saw 209 Times and thought, Well, it’s a news site. Why would anyone purposely and deliberately go out and deceive people? So a lot of people took it at face value, like this is just an alternative news site because the Record doesn’t run as much, the Record’s not as quick, etc. And what we saw was that they started with just blatantly false articles, like articles that were literally lies and disinformation. It was really about weaponizing information and playing on people’s biases and racism. 

The stories would all follow a similar thread. Either (a) Michael Tubbs was stealing money from the city, because Black people are criminals—and I think for a lot of people it played on their bias and orientation towards, Who are Black people really? And (b) the second one was, Michael Tubbs doesn’t work, or Michael Tubbs is lazy, which is another racist trope—that Black people, particularly Black men, loiter, that they’re criminals, that they don’t work, that they’re lazy. And (c) the third was, again, Michael Tubbs is just corrupt. It’s just a corrupt administration. There’s no way he could win legitimately. He doesn’t live in the city. It’s corrupt, it’s corrupt; he’s under investigation; he’s corrupt. And for four years, leveraging social media and leveraging algorithms, they fed that poison. 

And in the course of that, they just created a different reality. I left office with a thirteen-million-dollar surplus. We were named as the fourth most fiscally healthy city in this country. But for a lot of folks, it was, No, he’s stealing money. It’s just a different reality. And that’s what I recognized, that no, this disinformation wasn’t just about an election campaign, but indeed, it was a four-year campaign that only works in a news desert. It only works when the algorithm rewards racism and bigotry and bias. It only works when there’s no check, there’s no certification. We know that brain research tells us that we look for news that confirms our bias; we look for facts that confirm our bias. And that, if I’m biased to be racist, or if I’m biased to think that the government is corrupt, I’ll find something, whether it’s the Epoch Times or the 209 Times or OAN or Fox News, that’s going to create the reality.

Liberals Angling On Freeing Narrative Hegemony From The Ruthlessly Parasitic Clutches Of Google And Facebook

nakedcapitalism |   From France to Australia to the US state of Maryland, the free press is waging a battle for survival against Facebook and Google. Besides being gushing firehoses of COVID and election disinformation and QAnon conspiracies, another of Google and Facebook’s dangerous impacts is undermining the financial stability of media outlets all over the world.

Where is the Biden administration and European Commission in this fight? A lot is at stake, yet so far they have been quiet as church mice.

How do Google and Facebook threaten the Free Press? These two companies alone suck up an astounding 60% of all online advertising in the world (outside China). With Amazon taking another 9 percent, that leaves a mere 30% of global digital ad revenue to be split among thousands of media outlets, many of them local publications. With digital online advertising now comprising over half of all ad spendng (and projected to grow further), that has greatly contributed to underfunded and failing news industries in country after country, including in Europe and the US.

Australia’s situation is typical. Its competition commission found that, for every $100 spent by online advertisers in Australia, $47 goes to Google and $24 to Facebook (71%), even as traditional advertising has declined. Various studies have found that the majority of people who access their news online don’t go to the original news source, instead they access it via Facebook’s and Google’s platforms which are cleverly designed to hold users’ attention. Many users rarely click through the links, instead they absorb the gist of the news from the platforms’ headlines and preview blurbs.

Consequently, Facebook and Google receive the lion’s share of revenue from digital ads, rather than the original news sources receiving it. Note that Facebook and Google could tweak their design and algorithms to purposefully drive users to the original news sources’ websites. But they don’t.

So Australia decided to fight this duopoly with some rules-setting of its own. A new law will require large digital media companies to compensate Australian media companies fairly for re-packaging and monetizing their proprietary news content. Media outlets around the world are watching to see how this plays out.

Google initially fought the proposal, but finally negotiated deals with Australian news publishers to pay them some compensation. But Facebook flexed its digital muscles by cutting off Australia entirely from its platform for several days, preventing Aussie news publishers as well as everyday users, including important government agencies like health, fire and crisis services, from posting, viewing or sharing news content.

The result was jarring, the proverbial “shot heard ‘round the world.” Facebook censored Australian users more effectively than the Chinese communist government ever could, prompting charges of “big tech authoritarianism.” Facebook finally relented to Australia’s requirement, in return for some vague and uncertain concessions. But the message of raw, naked platform power was unmistakably clear.

Now a similar battle is playing out in the US state of Maryland. Over the last 10 years, US newspapers’ advertising revenue has declined by 62%, and without that funding newsroom employment dropped by nearly half. Squeezed by these economics, Maryland approved the US’s first tax on digital ad revenue (earned inside its state borders), targeting companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. The measure is projected to generate as much as $250 million in its first year, dedicated to schools.

Conservatives Angling On An Escape From The Ruthlessly Parasitic Clutches Of Google

 CTH  |  Let us first be clear… CTH is not suddenly naive enough to believe that Google is now positioning out of some great sense of altruism, magnanimity or business stewardship. That thought is laughable in the extreme.  No, what is really going on here is that the Eye of Sauron has noticed how the Rebel Alliance, within which CTH is a leading insurgency voice, has found ways to tunnel under the technology landscape.

Additionally, both domestic and international patriots are putting laws, rules and regulations into place that are directly adverse to the current business model that Google has been dependent upon for their Ad Revenue services.  There are people working in the background to create regulations on top of the tech industry that are founded on privacy concerns.

In the U.S. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature are one group who are heeding the assistance from tech insiders, members of the insurgency, well versed in the roadmap of Google.  There are plans in the works that will cut the tentacles of the Tech overlords.  Google is now being manipulatively proactive in their self-defense.

Outside the U.S. the advancements of privacy regulations are being spear-headed by Australia, Poland, Hungary and subsidiary Rebel Alliance members who are also benefiting from the insider information provided.  The alliance membership grows daily.

Cont… […] Google plans to stop selling ads based on individuals’ browsing across multiple websites, a change that could hasten upheaval in the digital advertising industry.

The Alphabet Inc. GOOG -2.57% company said Wednesday that it plans next year to stop using or investing in tracking technologies that uniquely identify web users as they move from site to site across the internet.

The decision, coming from the world’s biggest digital-advertising company, could help push the industry away from the use of such individualized tracking, which has come under increasing criticism from privacy advocates and faces scrutiny from regulators.

How do we know the Rebel Alliance is making a difference?  Specifically, how do we know efforts of CTH are bearing fruit in our tech push-back…. Because “sandboxing” was a CTH developmental tool, being field tested with tech partners since 2017.

[…] Google says its ad-buying tools will use new technologies it has been developing with others in what it calls a “privacy sandbox” to target ads without collecting information about individuals from multiple websites. One such technology analyzes users’ browsing habits on their own devices, and allows advertisers to target aggregated groups of users with similar interests, or “cohorts,” rather than individual users. Google said in January that it plans to begin open testing of buying using that technology in the second quarter. (read more)

Ironically, and not coincidentally, it appears Google now wants to own the tunneling technology that was created specifically to work around the influence of Google.

Go figure.

 

Covid Is The Blueprint: Global Lockdowns Every Two Years To Achieve Paris Climate Change Goals

guardian |  Carbon dioxide emissions must fall by the equivalent of a global lockdown roughly every two years for the next decade for the world to keep within safe limits of global heating, research has shown.

Lockdowns around the world led to an unprecedented fall in emissions of about 7% in 2020, or about 2.6bn tonnes of CO₂, but reductions of between 1bn and 2bn tonnes are needed every year of the next decade to have a good chance of holding temperature rises to within 1.5C or 2C of pre-industrial levels, as required by the Paris agreement.

Research published on Wednesday shows that countries were beginning to slow their rates of greenhouse gas emissions before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, but not to the levels needed to avert climate breakdown. Since lockdowns were eased in many countries last year, there have been strong signs that emissions will rise again to above 2019 levels, severely damaging the prospects of fulfilling the Paris goals.

Corinne Le Quéré, lead author of the study, said the world stood at a crucial point as governments poured money into the global economy to cope with the impacts of the pandemic. “We need a cut in emissions of about the size of the fall [from the lockdowns] every two years, but by completely different methods,” she said.

Governments must prioritise climate action in their efforts to recover from the pandemic, she said. “We have failed to understand in the past that we can’t have tackling climate change as a side issue. It can’t be about one law or policy, it has to be put at the heart of all policy,” she said. “Every strategy and every plan from every government must be consistent with tackling climate change.”

The study joins other research showing that the drastic fall in greenhouse gas emissions associated with the pandemic will have little impact on long-term climate goals, and may be followed by a swift rebound unless countries take rapid action to direct their economies away from fossil fuels.

“There is a real contradiction between what governments are saying they are doing to do [to generate a green recovery], and what they are doing,” said Le Quéré. “That is very worrisome.”

 

6.5 Billion Of Y'all Gotta Go Gotta Go Gotta Go!!!!

scheerpost |  What is taking place is not neglect. It is not ineptitude. It is not policyfailure. It is murder. It is murder because it is premeditated. It is murder because a conscious choice was made by the global ruling classes to extinguish life rather than protect it. It is murder because profit, despite the hard statistics, the growing climate disruptions and the scientific modeling, is deemed more important than human life and human survival. 

The elites thrive in this system, as long as they serve the dictates of what Lewis Mumford called the “megamachine,” the convergence of science, economy, technics and political power unified into an integrated, bureaucratic structure whose sole goal is to perpetuate itself. This structure, Mumford noted, is antithetical to “life-enhancing values.” But to challenge the megamachine, to name and condemn its death wish, is to be expelled from its inner sanctum. There are, no doubt, some within the megamachine who fear the future, who are perhaps even appalled by the social murder, but they do not want to lose their jobs and their social status to become pariahs.  

The massive resources allocated to the military, which when the costs of the Veterans Administration are added to the Department of Defense budget come to $826 billion a year, are the most glaring example of our suicidal folly, symptomatic of all decaying civilizations that squander diminishing resources in institutions and projects that accelerate their decline.  

The American military — which accounts for 38 percent of military spending worldwide — is incapable of combating the real existential crisis.  The fighter jets, satellites, aircraft carriers, fleets of warships, nuclear submarines, missiles, tanks and vast arsenals of weaponry are useless against pandemics and the climate crisis. The war machine does nothing to mitigate the human suffering caused by degraded environments that sicken and poison populations or make life unsustainable.  Air pollution already kills an estimated 200,000 Americans a year while children in decayed cities such as Flint, Michigan are damaged for life with lead contamination from drinking water. 

The prosecution of endless and futile wars, costing anywhere from $5 to $7 trillion, the maintenance of some 800 military bases in over 70 countries, along with the endemic fraud, waste and mismanagement by the Pentagon at a time when the survival of the species is at stake is self-destructive.  The Pentagon has spent more than $67 billion alone on a ballistic missile defense system that few believe will actually work and billions more on a series of dud weapons systems, including the $22 billion Zumwalt destroyer. And, on top of all this, the U.S. military emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon emissions between 2001 and 2017, twice the annual output of the nation’s passenger vehicles.

A decade from now we will look back at the current global ruling class as the most criminal in human history, willfully dooming millions upon millions of people to die, including those from this pandemic, which dwarf the murderous excesses of the killers of the past including the Europeans that carried out the genocide of the indigenous peoples in the Americas, the Nazis that exterminated some 12 million people, the Stalinists or Mao’s Cultural Revolution. This is the largest crime against humanity ever committed. It is being committed in front of us. And, with few exceptions, we are willfully being herded like sheep to the slaughter.

It is not that most people have faith in the ruling elites. They know they are being betrayed. They feel vulnerable and afraid. They understand that their misery is unacknowledged and unimportant to the global elites, who have concentrated staggering amounts of wealth and power into the hands of a tiny cabal of rapacious oligarchs.

Time Grows Short Sleepyheads...,

charleshughsmith |  Even as the chirpy happy-talk of a return to normal floods the airwaves, what nobody dares acknowledge is that "normal" for a rising number of Americans is the social depression of downward mobility and social defeat.

Downward mobility is not a new trend--it's simply accelerating. As this RAND Corporation report documents, ( Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018) $50 trillion in earnings has been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households over the past 45 years.

Time magazine's article on the report is remarkably direct: The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% -- And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure.

"The $50 trillion transfer of wealth the RAND report documents has occurred entirely within the American economy, not between it and its trading partners. No, this upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn't inevitable; it was a choice--a direct result of the trickle-down policies we chose to implement since 1975.

We chose to cut taxes on billionaires and to deregulate the financial industry. We chose to allow CEOs to manipulate share prices through stock buybacks, and to lavishly reward themselves with the proceeds. We chose to permit giant corporations, through mergers and acquisitions, to accumulate the vast monopoly power necessary to dictate both prices charged and wages paid. We chose to erode the minimum wage and the overtime threshold and the bargaining power of labor. For four decades, we chose to elect political leaders who put the material interests of the rich and powerful above those of the American people."

I've been digging into downward mobility and social depression for years: Are You Really Middle Class? The reality is that the middle class has been reduced to the sliver just below the top 5%--if we use the standards of the prosperous 1960s as a baseline.

The downward mobility isn't just financial--it's a decline in political power, control of one's work and ownership of income-producing assets. This article reminds us of what the middle class once represented: What Middle Class? How bourgeois America is getting recast as a proletariat.

This reappraisal of the American Dream is also triggering a reappraisal of the middle class in the decades of widespread prosperity: The Myth of the Middle Class: Have Most Americans Always Been Poor?

Downward mobility excels in creating and distributing what I term social defeat: In my lexicon, social defeat is the spectrum of anxiety, insecurity, chronic stress, fear and powerlessness that accompanies declining financial security and social status.

Did I Miss Out On Dr. Seuss' Classic "Nigger In The Wood Pile"?

newsweek |  Cancel culture activists have come for Dr. Seuss, who they deem a racist despite the fact that his books were undoubtedly woke for their time. It shouldn't be dismissed as yet another silly instance of fringe activists overreacting. It's part of a coordinated campaign to indoctrinate children to take on progressive causes.

After complaints from teachers and academics, Dr. Seuss Enterprises decided to cease publishing six books, including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and Scrambled Eggs Super!, accused of having racist and insensitive imagery.

The move was supposedly long in the works, but it comes as Virginia's Loudoun County Public Schools issued guidance to promote "inclusive and diverse" books rather than to "simply celebrate Dr. Seuss." Read Across America Day coincides with Dr. Seuss' birthday.

"Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss," the school district said in a statement.

One piece of that "research" comes from Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens, two social justice activists behind the Conscious Kid, an organization "dedicated to equity and promoting healthy racial identity development in youth."

Both authors use critical race theory to condemn Dr. Seuss. They compared the number of white characters with the number of those representing minority communities, and judged the "dominance" and "master narrative" exhibited by white characters. They looked for stereotypes and characters who were dehumanized or exoticized.

Their study, "The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss's Children's Books," has been championed by activists seeking to remove books they deem problematic and replace them with content that teaches kids through a critical race theory lens.

"The Cat's physical appearance, including the Cat's oversized top hat, floppy bow tie, white gloves, and frequently open mouth, mirrors actual blackface performers; as does the role he plays as 'entertainer' to the white family—in whose house he doesn't belong," Ishizuka said of Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat.

 

 

 

Covid Vaccine Death And Injury Stats Don't Add Up

rosemaryfrei |  There are at least three clues to why there is dramatic under-reporting of serious illness and death from the vaccine.

One clue is that for years now politicians and public-health bureaucrats have been saturating the airwaves, academe and health-care institutions with the messaging that vaccines are safe and effective. They tell us ceaselessly that serious adverse events are one in a million.

The same goes for the Covid vaccines. We’re told the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and other shots were thoroughly tested in “large clinical trials” before being used in the populace at large. And that they had to be rushed into use because they’re critical for saving lives in the midst of the worldwide Covid emergency.

The second clue for here in Ontario is that the same person who’s in charge of the rushing of vaccines into millions of people’s arms also heads the office that leads death investigations, including deaths of people who died from Covid or who passed away shortly after receiving a Covid vaccine.

That person is Dirk Huyer. I’ve written previously about his prominence in pushing the official Covid narrative and rushing Covid vaccines into millions of Ontarians’ arms. (On May 11 and May 26, 2020, I documented his role in drastically changing the way deaths are handled in Ontario, making it far harder to determine whether a death attributed to Covid was instead caused by something else; and on October 20, 2020, I wrote about how Huyer has climbed the bureaucratic ladder by serving the powerful rather than the populace).

Others have also written about how the Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario has performed shockingly poorly under his watch. For example, investigative journalists at the National Post, Toronto Star and Hamilton Spectator showed that Huyer and a  colleague likely shut down a busy forensic-pathology unit in southwestern Ontario as revenge for the unit’s staff lodging official complaints about the pair’s bullying behaviour including interference in evidence-based decision-making.

And Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk’s 2019 annual report devotes a chapter to the Office of the Chief Coroner and the Ontario Forensic Pathology Service. Among the serious deficits she documented were that, “The Office misses the opportunity to make more effective use of its death investigation data to identify actions to improve public safety and reduce preventable deaths.”

Officially, Dirk Huyer doesn’t have a direct role in investigations of deaths related to Covid. Stephanie Rea, a spokesperson for Huyer and his office, responded to a question from me about this; she indicated that Huyer stepped back from such investigations last August.

“The Chief Coroner for Ontario has recused himself from any work the Office of the Chief Coroner is doing in regard to COVID-19 to maintain the impartiality of the death investigation system. COVID-19 related work with the Office of the Chief Coroner is overseen by two Deputy Chief Coroners,” Rea wrote in an email to me.

However, Dr. Huyer doesn’t say he’s recused himself. And he seemed to indicate in a press conference that he was involved in the investigation of a person who died after getting one of the Covid vaccines.

The third clue is that doctors seldom report adverse events. When people get really sick or die after getting a vaccination the docs attribute that to anything but the vaccines. It’s been that way for years. Anyone who wonders aloud whether the Covid vaccines or other shots cause harm is immediately branded as “anti-vax” and “anti-science.” That’s a career-threatening consequence for health professionals.

And of course on top of that there’s huge pressure to go along with the push to vaccinate billions of people in as short a time as possible.

Are mRNA Vaccines Riskier For Obese People?

verywellhealth  |  “Adipose fat is considered like an endocrine organ now, and the immune response in central obesity is that the fat that sits around the organ and abdomen has a much higher prevalence of low immunity in fighting infection and generating antibodies to vaccines,” Desai says.

A 2012 review in the Proceedings Of The Nutrition Society reported that a potential mechanism could be that excess fat hinders access to the nutrients that immune cells need to carry out their daily activities.6

More Years of Obesity Leads to Higher Risk for Disease, Research Shows

How Vaccination Is Affected

Research has shown that obesity’s role in an impaired immune system often shows itself as lowered vaccine effectiveness. A 2017 study in the journal Annals of the American Thoracic Society found that adults with obesity who were vaccinated with the flu shot were two times more likely to get sick than vaccinated adults who were not obese—despite having the same level of vaccine-induced antibodies.7 The researchers theorized that the effect might be related to impaired T cell function.8

“The data we have so far is from influenza, hepatitis B, and tetanus that shows people who are obese have a decreased immune response to those vaccines,” Desai says.

What Does COVID-19 Vaccine Efficacy Mean?

The Bottom Line

In terms of the new COVID-19 vaccines, Glatt says that there’s no evidence that the mRNA vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer would not work in a person who is obese. Rather, Glatt thinks that there are not enough studies to show how well the vaccine works in people who are overweight or obese.

The data that has been released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Pfizer show that the clinical trial was representative of people at different body weights—34.8% of vaccinated participants and 35.3% of participants in the placebo group were obese.9

“I think the evidence strongly supports that it is effective in obese patients, but I can’t guarantee that it’s as effective until we get a lot more data,” Glatt says.

Obesity May Alter Immune System Response to COVID-19

Unlike the annual flu shot that uses a weakened or inactive version of the influenza virus, Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines use mRNA technology. Desai says that this changes how the immune response is generated.

However, Desai personally thinks that people who are obese will still respond poorly to the COVID-19 virus because of the body’s inability to handle the infection.

“It’s not how the immune challenge is administered whether through a vaccine or natural disease. The body’s response is weak irrespective of how the challenge is dealt,” Desai says. “People with obesity are most likely going to respond poorly whether it’s the vaccine or the virus. The coronavirus has already proven that it’s not good for obese individuals. In my opinion, no scientific evidence on this yet, [but] the vaccine will work more poorly in obese individuals.”

Obesity Prevention

By that logic, boosting your chances for vaccine effectiveness means controlling for obesity—but Glatt admits that's easier said than done. “It’s a hard thing to accomplish, but it’s an important thing to accomplish.”

Ain't Nobody Gonna Pay To Reduce Aerosol Transmission - Matter Fact - Don't Even Talk About It!!!

nakedcapitalism |  My most frequent Google use case is searching for posts I know I have written so I can link to them, since searching for them on WordPress causes timeouts, because our database has issues.

Imagine my surprise, then, when yesterday (Sunday, February 28), I searched for the following post from February 18, “CDC School Reopening Guidance Suppresses Aerosols Based on Thin Evidence and Driven by Budgetary Concerns,” (Reopening Guidance) and nothing came up. I then performed a number of other searches for likely keywords, like “aerosol.” Again, no joy. I mentioned this to Yves, who also got no hits, and she said I should check with others, since Google will optimize searches for the individual. I verified that “CDC School Reopening Guidance Suppresses Aerosols” at NC was the first hit on both Bing and DuckDuckGo, sent out my want list for searches to two geographically distributed friends, and sat back to await results in the form of screen shots. I present the results here in tabular form, because a post full of screenshots would not be readable:

Table 1: Google Searches for Reopening Guidance February 28 (Three Users)

Label	Search	Hits for Post
#1	“CDC School Reopening Guidance Suppresses Aerosols” site:www.nakedcapitalism.com	0
#2	CDC schools site:www.nakedcapitalism.com	0
#3	CDC guidance site:www.nakedcapitalism.com	0
#4	walensky site:www.nakedcapitalism.com	0
#5	cdc school re-opening site:www.nakedcapitalism.com Sidebar	0
#6	aerosols site:www.nakedcapitalism.com	0

So, nobody got results for Reopening Guidance, including search #1, on a big chunk of the post title plus the URL for the site.

Now, in the headline I said that Google “suppressed” Reopening Guidance. (I don’t say “censor,” because in my view censorship is properly considered a function of the State, a task of officialdom, and Google is not a State actor, at least not yet.) There are three reasons (besides past behavior) to think that Google did this. When I searched on “CDC School Reopening Guidance Suppresses Aerosols” (search #1, Table 1):

(1) Reopening Guidance was the very first hit in Bing and DuckDuckGo (each of which run search engines independent of Google). That would imply that Google, and only Google, has some secret sauce that causes my post not to appear.

(2) Reopening Guidance appears in “Recent Items” hits (and one internal cross-reference) but there are no hits for the post itself.

One Of My Homegirls Chewed Me Out Cause I Won't Buss It Open For A Swab And A Jab...,

yahoo |  As the United States adds another COVID-19 vaccine to its arsenal and ramps up its distribution drive, potentially pushing the country closer toward herd immunity, concerns about vaccine hesitancy among the population remain. But overall, it seems, people are growing increasingly comfortable with getting a shot. Data from the KFF Vaccine Monitor shows 55 percent of Americans have either already received a vaccine dose or plan on getting one as soon as possible, Axios reports. For context, back in December only 34 percent of people said they were prepared for inoculation without hesitation.

The share of Americans who say they won’t get vaccinated is now small enough that the U.S. should be able to reach herd immunity even if the most reluctant people don’t change their minds, according to polling. https://t.co/xJ3UNVDFYf

— Axios (@axios) March 1, 2021

The increase there appears to correlate with a decline in the number of people who are in the "wait and see" camp, especially because the number of surefire holdouts has remained steady. And even if folks in the latter group don't ever change their minds, Axios notes, herd immunity is feasible.

Additionally, while much has been made about hesitancy, driven by historical distrust in the U.S. health care system, among communities of color, Black and Latino Americans have rapidly and consistently joined the ranks of people who want a shot, polling conducted by Civiqs between November and February shows, per Axios. Overall, white Americans are now less likely to get vaccinated, and the stance is largely split along party lines.

Da'Fug Wrong With Andrew Cuomo's "Oh Me So Horny" Ole-Ass?!?!?!

NYTimes |  Anna Ruch had never met Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo before encountering him at a crowded New York City wedding reception in September 2019. Her first impression was positive enough.

The governor was working the room after toasting the newlyweds, and when he came upon Ms. Ruch, now 33, she thanked him for his kind words about her friends. But what happened next instantly unsettled her: Mr. Cuomo put his hand on Ms. Ruch’s bare lower back, she said in an interview on Monday.

When she removed his hand with her own, Ms. Ruch recalled, the governor remarked that she seemed “aggressive” and placed his hands on her cheeks. He asked if he could kiss her, loudly enough for a friend standing nearby to hear. Ms. Ruch was bewildered by the entreaty, she said, and pulled away as the governor drew closer.

“I was so confused and shocked and embarrassed,” said Ms. Ruch, whose recollection was corroborated by the friend, contemporaneous text messages and photographs from the event. “I turned my head away and didn’t have words in that moment.”

 Ms. Ruch’s account comes after two former aides accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment in the workplace, plunging his third term into turmoil as the governor’s defenders and Mr. Cuomo himself strain to explain his behavior.

A spokesman for the governor did not directly address Ms. Ruch’s account, referring to a general statement that Mr. Cuomo released on Sunday night in which he acknowledged that some things he had said “have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation.”

“To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that,” the statement said.

Ms. Ruch’s example is distinct from those of the former aides: A former member of the Obama administration and the 2020 Biden campaign, Ms. Ruch has never been employed by the governor or the state. But her experience reinforces the escalating concerns and accusations about Mr. Cuomo’s personal conduct — a pattern of words and actions that have, at minimum, made three women who are decades his junior feel deeply uncomfortable, in their collective telling.

Woke John Brennan Not Ashamed Of That Career-CIA "Life Of Crime....?"

washingtonexaminer |  Former CIA Director John Brennan said he is "increasingly embarrassed to be a white male" while discussing supporters of former President Donald Trump.

He made the comment during an MSNBC panel on Monday that set its focus on whether Republicans are lying about the circumstances surrounding the U.S. Capitol siege, when rioters disrupted lawmakers certifying President Biden's 2020 electoral victory.

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, remarked how she saw "whiny white men calling themselves victims ... over the weekend at CPAC," which she attributed to how they believe they have "a huge grievance from a position of significant privilege," before asserting that the Republican Party has embraced lies about who the rioters were and in claiming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied a request for National Guard support.

Host Nicolle Wallace, who was a White House communications director under President George W. Bush, then teed up Brennan by casting doubt on the "notion" that Republicans care about the lives and safety of law enforcement. 

"Well, I must say, to Claire's point, I’m increasingly embarrassed to be a white male these days," Brennan began, prompting a laugh from Wallace, who was visible on the split screen, "with what I see other white males saying."

Noting "very few exceptions" in the GOP, naming Sen. Mitt Romney and Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Brennan said that "there are so few Republicans in Congress who value truth, honesty, and integrity."

 

Gagged On Too Much Woke, "Liberal" Whites Are Starting To Choke

americanthinker |  The headlines were about the fact that, when Megyn Kelly appeared on Bill Maher’s HBO show on Friday, she complained about the way her children’s pricey private schools in New York were indoctrinating them with pro-transgender values and anti-white animus. Bill Maher to his credit, agreed with Kelly that matters are getting seriously out of hand, at least when it comes to the anti-white hatred that’s becoming the norm in education. Maher’s always been a bit of maverick, though. The real surprise was the enthusiasm his audience showed for that sentiment.

For conservatives, nothing that Kelly said about her children’s experiences in New York’s toniest private elementary schools came as a surprise. Kelly said that, while she and her husband identify as “center-right,” she was okay with the fact that the schools were on the left side of the political aisle. That changed, though, when “they went hard left, and then they started to take a really hard turn toward social justice stuff.”

One of the hot-button issues was the schools’ efforts to normalize transgenderism, a form of body dysphoria that’s recognized as a mental illness when the subject is anorexia, not sex. Kelly told Maher that, when one of her sons was in third grade – that is, 8 years old, the school “unleashed a three-week experimental trans-education program.”

You talked about this letter the school put out. … Can I read some of the things that are from this letter, lest people think I’m losing my mind?

“There’s a killer cop sitting in every school where white children learn. White children are left unchecked and unbothered in their homes,” one sentence starts. Well, how old do you have to be before you can just be unchecked and unbothered. You know, what age to you get bothered?

“I’m tired of white people reveling in their state-sanctioned depravities, snuffing out black lives with no consequences.” You know, “go reform white kids.”

You know, it bothers me so much that I have to be on this side [Kelly’s side] of this issue. Because I’ve always been a civil rights advocate. You know, don’t make me Tucker Carlson. You’re the f***ing nuts. This is insane.

“As black bodies drop like flies around us by violent white hands.” There is racist problems in this country. But this is hyperbole, and this is making people crazy.

It was with those words that the amazing thing happened: Maher’s audience applauded. Over the years, Maher’s audiences have always been trained seals, reliably clapping at every hard left, anti-George Bush, anti-Trump, pro-Obama statement the host utters. But this time, he said that the BLM rap pushing Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) on American society is dangerous insanity – and the audience clapped.

Does The Great Reset Expect Wokeness To Get You To Relinquish Property?

mises |   What exactly is wokeness? As I write in Beyond Woke,

According to the social justice creed, being “woke” is the political awakening that stems from the emergence of consciousness and conscientiousness regarding social and political injustice. Wokeness is the indelible inscription of the awareness of social injustice on the conscious mind, eliciting the sting of conscience, which compels the newly woke to change their be­liefs and behaviors.4

This is as close to a definition of wokeness as I can manage, gleaning it as I have from the assertions of those who embrace it. Of course, the etymology of the word “woke,” and how it became an adjective describing those who are thus awakened into consciousness of social and political injustice, is another matter. I discuss the etymology in Google Archipelago:

“Woke” began in English as a past tense and past participle of “wake.” It suggested “having become awake.” But, by the 1960s, woke began to function as an adjective as well, gaining the figurative meaning in the African American community of “well-informed” or “up-to-date.” By 1972, the once modest verbal past tense began to describe an elevated political consciousness. In 2017, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) recognized the social-conscious awareness of woke and added the definition: “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”5

Yet there are as many definitions of wokeness as people who’ve heard of it, as is the case with most anything the least bit controversial. I’m sure that others can and will add to the definition or suggest that wokeness should be defined altogether differently. But the above definition and historical-semantical renderings are sufficient for our purposes. According to adherents, then, wokeness is enhanced awareness of social and political injustice and the determination to eradicate it.

But what could wokeness have to do with the Great Reset? As a corrective, wokeness is not aimed at the sufferers whose complaints, or imagined complaints, it means to redress. Wokeness works on the majority, the supposed beneficiaries of injustice. It does so by making the majority understand that it has benefited from “privilege” and preference—based on skin color (whiteness), gender (patriarchy), sexual proclivity (heteronormativity), birthplace (colonialism, imperialism, and first worldism), gender identity (cis gender privilege), and the domination of nature (speciesism)—to name some of the major culprits. The list could go on and is emended, seemingly by the day. This majority must be rehabilitated, as it were. The masses must understand that they have gained whatever advantages they have hitherto enjoyed on the basis of the unfair treatment of others, either directly or indirectly, and this unfair treatment is predicated on the circumstances of birth. The “privilege” of the majority has come at the expense of those minorities designated as the beneficiaries of wokeness, and wokeness is the means for rectifying these many injustices.

And what are the effects of being repeatedly reprimanded as such, of being told that one has been the beneficiary of unmerited “privilege,” that one’s relative wealth and well-being have come at the expense of oppressed, marginalized, and misused Others? Shame, guilt, remorse, unworthiness. And what are the expected attitudinal and behavioral adjustments to be taken by the majority? They are to expect less. Under woke ideology, one will be expected to forfeit one’s rights, because even these rights, nay, especially these rights, have come at the expense of others.

Thus, wokeness works by habituating the majority to the reduced expectations that I introduced in my first installment on the Great Reset. It does this by instilling a belief in the unworthiness of the majority to thrive, prosper, and enjoy their lives. Wokeness indoctrinates the majority into the propertyless future (for them, at least) of the Great Reset, while gratifying the Left, its main ideological propagators, with a sense of moral superiority, even as they too are scheduled to become bereft of prospects.

One question remains. Why is wokeness more suited to the objectives of the Great Reset than socialist-communist ideology?

You Think Bill Gates Is Buying Up All This Farmland For Africa?

NYPost |  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently launched a new division known as Gates Ag One. It aims to help poor farmers, especially in Africa and South Asia, get the “tools, technologies, and resources they need to lift themselves out of poverty.” If each acre can produce more food, that’s good news for farmers. But it also means we can devote less of the planet’s surface to farmland, which is good news for forests and ecosystems. 

Meanwhile, American agriculture today is being transformed as farmers employ new technologies and Big Data to help them manage their crops. That can mean better yields with decreased use of fertilizers and pesticides. Which in turn means less impact on the environment. 

Farms also have a role in fighting climate change. With proper techniques, the carbon from decaying plant matter can be kept safely in the soil, rather than entering the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. 

A new coalition of farmland owners, operators and environmental groups is working to come up with verifiable standards for sustainable farming. The group is called Leading Harvest, and the Gates-linked Cottonwood Ag is one of its founding members. 

Leading Harvest envisions a kind of sustainability seal of approval certifying that a given farm meets environmental standards. The program could be an economic boon for farmers. 

“In the future, farmers will be paid for sustainability,” says Sherrick, who sits on the group’s board. There will be incentives for things like using less water, fewer chemicals, and storing more carbon. 

The group’s founding members are expected to spearhead the rollout of the new standards on their own lands. 

Whether or not Gates personally directed Cottonwood Ag to get involved in the Leading Harvest project, the move makes both environmental and business sense. 

“The new green economy will mean new opportunities for land owners,” O’Keefe believes. 

“Farming is all of a sudden part of the solution and not just part of the problem,” Sherrick adds. He sees Gates’ involvement — even if indirect — as crucial in encouraging the industry to embrace the new sustainability standard. 

If the nation’s largest farmland owner can show that farming can be both sustainable and profitable, that will make a big difference. 

“People are going to pay attention to what Bill is doing,” Sherrick says.

Racially Hypersensitive Rep. Katherine Clark Flatly Contradicted By Chief Yogananda Pittman

apnews |  Capitol Police leadership had plenty of intelligence warning that armed extremists were planning to target the Capitol over President Donald Trump’s election loss, according to new testimony Thursday. But their rank-and-file officers were still left exposed against armed rioters who came within steps of lawmakers.

In an appearance before a House subcommittee, acting Chief Yogananda Pittman said none of the warnings forecast the mass attack that actually took place.

Both Democrats and Republicans took issue with that, saying the intelligence sounded both specific and credible.

“I cannot get past a glaring discrepancy between intelligence received and preparation,” Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., said during Thursday’s hearing before the House Appropriations Committee. 

Pittman became acting chief when her predecessor, Steven Sund, resigned in the wake of the insurrection. At the time of the attack, she was serving as assistant chief for protective and intelligence services.

Here’s some of what was learned from Pittman’s testimony:

WHAT INTELLIGENCE DID POLICE HAVE BEFORE THE JAN. 6 ATTACK?

Three days before the attack, the Capitol Police department’s own security assessment warned that militia members, white supremacists, and other extremists were planning to come to Washington and target Congress in what they saw as a “last stand” to support Trump.

Pittman says the details of that assessment were shared throughout the department, with sergeants and lieutenants told to spread the word to rank-and-file officers.

It’s not clear how effective that messaging was, however. Four officers interviewed by The Associated Press last month say they had little or no warning of what would happen and felt they were left unprepared for the attack.

Pittman also faced questions about an FBI memo, received the night before the attack, that warned extremists planned to wage “war” to prevent Joe Biden’s election victory from being certified. She said that memo never reached her, but that it would not have changed the department’s preparations anyway.

 

The Uniparty Can't Afford To Jail Oppositional White Expendables - So It Nazifies Them Instead

mises |  These days, it sure looks like they have them right where they want them. Using the storming of the Capitol Building as a pretext, the media-government alliance has targeted Trump, his supporters, and their fellow travelers harder than ever before. Many on the right consider the January 6 storming to have been a dream come true for the leftist elite—giving them the ability to impeach Trump again, deplatform right-wingers, and weaponize the Justice Department against the establishment’s foes. Everything, though, may not be as it first seems. There’s no reason to be despondent or worry that the Left has sealed its ultimate victory—it has done no such thing. Rather, the storming, for what it's worth, proved the power of ragtag populists and exposed the elite’s shaky foundations. There’s a reason they’re so terrified.

When the rioters began their push to breach the Capitol Building, lawmakers were forced to shelter in place, before then evacuating to a secure location. For some of them, the day's events were evidently traumatic. That can be seen in the hyperbolic language that’s been used to describe the storming, like Chuck Schumer likening it to Pearl Harbor. The stormers crossed the threshold of the establishment's cushy elitism and exposed lawmakers to the real-world ire their actions create. As described in a passage from Cato’s Letters, “The only secret … in forming a free government is to make the interests of the governors and of the governed the same.” Angry populists, who’ve watched federal decrees wreak havoc on their lives, turned around and gave lawmakers a taste of their own medicine.

In the wake of this, the media-government alliance has clamped down against the populist right harder than ever before. Yet, in this vicious pushback, one can sense a prescient hint of panic within establishment ranks that the threads of their dominance may finally be unraveling. Far from playing a domineering role, the establishment politicos find themselves on the defensive in a politically unstable position. Someday—whether it be in one week or thirty years—the US could face a serious period of mass antiestablishment demonstrations; if that day comes, it’ll signal the Washington elite’s ultimate failure.

With no cards left to play, they may be forced to tread lightly on the right-wing populists and avoid violent confrontation as much as possible, for fear of repercussions like those of January 6. This may force their hand into granting the Right some concessions—perhaps some very big ones, like a return to more states’ rights or, better yet, the right of unilateral secession. This would short-circuit the federal order and help restore to America’s overtaxed and overburdened some of their long-withheld freedoms. With everything in view, it looks like the journey down this path may have already begun.

Protected Selected Corporate Fascist Chosen One Hoisted By His Pathetic Old Petard...,

As the Daily Mail noted on Thursday, CNN, ABC, CNN and MSNBC have devoted little to no time discussing Cuomo's nursing home scandal, or explosive new sexual harassment claims levied against the New York governor.

WATCH: CNN’s Jim Acosta confronted at CPAC over his network’s failure to cover Cuomo’s multiple scandals. pic.twitter.com/5AWGIeZ55F

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) February 26, 2021

ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC on Wednesday avoided discussing the explosive new sexual harassment claims against New York Gov Andrew Cuomo during their evening news broadcasts.  

Earlier on Wednesday, Lindsey Boylan, shared on Medium that during her more than three years in the Democrat's administration, Cuomo 'would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs,' compared her to one of his rumored ex-girlfriends and once remarked they should play strip poker. 

And according to Fox News, which cited Grabien transcripts, ABC's World News Tonight, CBS' Evening News, and NBC's Nightly News made no mention of Cuomo or the allegations against him. 

CNN and MSNBC also skipped over the allegations against the governor whose spokesperson Caitlin Girouard said that all Boylan's 'claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false'.

During CNN host Chris Cuomo's segment Wednesday night, he discussed why Democrats can't get a deal on pandemic relief, the January 6 Capitol riot and the Boeing 777 incident from last weekend.  

Maybe Marcus learned to interrupt people from Acosta?