Metaverse Already Distorted To Accomodate An Infinitesimally Small Slice Of The Mentally Ill

technologyreview |  Last week, Meta (the umbrella company formerly known as Facebook) opened up access to its virtual-reality social media platform, Horizon Worlds. Early descriptions of the platform make it seem fun and wholesome, drawing comparisons to Minecraft. In Horizon Worlds, up to 20 avatars can get together at a time to explore, hang out, and build within the virtual space.

But not everything has been warm and fuzzy. According to Meta, on November 26, a beta tester reported something deeply troubling: she had been groped by a stranger on Horizon Worlds. On December 1, Meta revealed that she’d posted her experience in the Horizon Worlds beta testing group on Facebook.

Meta’s internal review of the incident found that the beta tester should have used a tool called “Safe Zone” that’s part of a suite of safety features built into Horizon Worlds. Safe Zone is a protective bubble users can activate when feeling threatened. Within it, no one can touch them, talk to them, or interact in any way until they signal that they would like the Safe Zone lifted.

Vivek Sharma, the vice president of Horizon, called the groping incident “absolutely unfortunate,” telling The Verge, “That’s good feedback still for us because I want to make [the blocking feature] trivially easy and findable.”

It’s not the first time a user has been groped in VR—nor, unfortunately, will it be the last. But the incident shows that until companies work out how to protect participants, the metaverse can never be a safe place.

“There I was, being virtually groped”

When Aaron Stanton heard about the incident at Meta, he was transported to October 2016. That was when a gamer, Jordan Belamire, penned an open letter on Medium describing being groped in Quivr, a game Stanton co-designed in which players, equipped with bow and arrows, shoot zombies.

In the letter, Belamire described entering a multiplayer mode, where all characters were exactly the same save for their voices. “In between a wave of zombies and demons to shoot down, I was hanging out next to BigBro442, waiting for our next attack. Suddenly, BigBro442’s disembodied helmet faced me dead-on. His floating hand approached my body, and he started to virtually rub my chest. ‘Stop!’ I cried … This goaded him on, and even when I turned away from him, he chased me around, making grabbing and pinching motions near my chest. Emboldened, he even shoved his hand toward my virtual crotch and began rubbing.

“There I was, being virtually groped in a snowy fortress with my brother-in-law and husband watching.”

Stanton and his cofounder, Jonathan Schenker, immediately responded with an apology and an in-game fix. Avatars would be able to stretch their arms into a V gesture, which would automatically push any offenders away.

Stanton, who today leads the VR Institute for Health and Exercise, says Quivr didn’t track data about that feature, “nor do I think it was used much.” But Stanton thinks about Belamire often and wonders if he could have done more in 2016 to prevent the incident that occurred in Horizon Worlds a few weeks ago. “There’s so much more to be done here,” he says. “No one should ever have to flee from a VR experience to escape feeling powerless.”

VR sexual harassment is sexual harassment, full stop

A recent review of the events around Belamire’s experience published in the journal for the Digital Games Research Association found that “many online responses to this incident were dismissive of Belamire’s experience and, at times, abusive and misogynistic … readers from all perspectives grappled with understanding this act given the virtual and playful context it occurred in.” Belamire faded from view, and I was unable to find her online.

A constant topic of debate on message boards after Belamire’s Medium article was whether or not what she had experienced was actually groping if her body wasn’t physically touched.

“I think people should keep in mind that sexual harassment has never had to be a physical thing,” says Jesse Fox, an associate professor at Ohio State University who researches the social implications of virtual reality. “It can be verbal, and yes, it can be a virtual experience as well.

 

Was The Covid Treatment Protocol A Medical Industrial "Cash For Death" Scheme?

lewrockwell |  The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a private medical organization founded in 1943, has the story — “Biden’s Bounty on Your Life: Hospitals’ Incentive Payments for COVID-19” (11/17/21), authored by Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D.

Here are stunning excerpts:

“Upon admission to a once-trusted hospital, American patients with COVID-19 become virtual prisoners, subjected to a rigid treatment protocol…for rationing medical care in those over age 50. They have a shockingly high mortality rate…”

“As exposed in audio recordings, hospital executives in Arizona admitted meeting several times a week to lower standards of care, with coordinated restrictions on visitation rights. Most COVID-19 patients’ families are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really being done to their loved ones.”

“The combination that enables this tragic and avoidable loss of hundreds of thousands of lives includes (1) The CARES Act, which provides hospitals with bonus incentive payments for all things related to COVID-19 (testing, diagnosing, admitting to hospital, use of remdesivir and ventilators, reporting COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinations) and (2) waivers of customary and long-standing patient rights by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).”

“In 2020, the Texas Hospital Association submitted requests for waivers to CMS. According to Texas attorney Jerri Ward, ‘CMS has granted “waivers” of federal law regarding patient rights. Specifically, CMS purports to allow hospitals to violate the rights of patients or their surrogates with regard to medical record access, to have patient visitation, and to be free from seclusion.’…The purported waivers are meant to isolate and gain total control over the patient and to deny patient and patient’s decision-maker the ability to exercise informed consent.”

“Creating a ‘National Pandemic Emergency’ provided justification for such sweeping actions that override individual physician medical decision-making and patients’ rights. The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments dictated solely by the federal government under the auspices of the NIH. These ‘bounties’ must paid back if not ‘earned’ by making the COVID-19 diagnosis and following the COVID-19 protocol.”

“The hospital payments include:

* A ‘free’ required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.

* Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.

* Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.

* A 20 percent ‘boost’ bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as Ivermectin.

* Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.

* More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.

* A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.”

“CMS implemented ‘value-based’ payment programs that track data such as how many workers at a healthcare facility receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Now we see why many hospitals implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They are paid more.”

“Outside hospitals, physician MIPS [Merit-based Incentive Payment System] quality metrics link doctors’ income to performance-based pay for treating patients with COVID-19 EUA drugs. Failure to report information to CMS can cost the physician 4% of reimbursement.”

“Because of obfuscation with medical coding and legal jargon, we cannot be certain of the actual amount each hospital receives per COVID-19 patient. But Attorney Thomas Renz and CMS whistleblowers have calculated a total payment of at least $100,000 per patient.”   Fist tap Big Don.

Aerosol Scientist Discovers Failure Of Political Economy And Elite Narrative Strategy All The Way Down

Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant. I need to be very clear: vaccines alone will not get any country out of this crisis.
It’s not vaccines instead of masks, distancing, ventilation or hand hygiene.
Do it all. Do it consistently. Do it well. pic.twitter.com/YAVfJXsviQ

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 14, 2021

twitter | 1/ Why is there such EXTREME RESISTANCE by @WHO, @CDCgov and IPC(*) to clearly state that COVID-19 is a dominantly AIRBORNE disease?

TLDR: see slide

*: IPC: Infection Prevention and Control scientists and professionals 

2/ This is extremely puzzling, as it is now extremely obvious that airborne transmission is DOMINANT for COVID-19.

There are mountains of evidence, e.g. as summarized in our @TheLancet publication.

And NO evidence whatsoever for droplets or surfaces!

Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1383566908797059078

3/ I've pondered this question a lot. I've been involved in discussions with @WHO, many IPC and public health researchers and practitioners, politicians in multiple countries etc.

This thread summarizes my understanding of the causes of this situation. I look forward to comments

4/ Early in pandemic, a major historical error in the understanding of the IPC field played a major role

"Droplet transmission" was an important concept in that field... and it is an error that dates from 1910!!

This thread has long version (here short):

Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1391111720526024708

5/ The concept of "sprayborne droplet transmission" was used by Charles Chapin (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V…), a prominent US Public Health researcher (later pres. of APHA), to explain the EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION that transmission increases in close proximity and decreases with distance

Charles V. Chapin - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V._Chapin

6/ As of the start of the pandemic, @WHO and @CDCgov were completely stuck on the concepts from Chapin (e.g. his seminal 1910 book: ), as exemplified by this @WHO video showing the sprayborne droplets as explanation why distance reduces transmission:

Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1244258441880797184

7/ The problem is that Chapin had made an error. He was pushing "contact infection" that he had conceptualized, and encountered a lot of resistance (his book: archive.org/details/source…).

The sources and modes of infection : Chapin, Charles V. (Charles Value), 1856-1941 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/sourcesmodesofin00ch

8/ Chapin was very intelligent, and was well aware that short-range airborne transmission could also explain why distance reduced transmission: we breathe less exhaled air from someone else as we increased distance

Curious: Delta Wave Was Driven By The Vaxxed Old, Omicron By The Vaxxed Young....,

💉 The omicron epidemic is being driven by young, vaccinated people, according to mounting data from countries as diverse as the UK, Denmark and South Africa https://t.co/bTRIBFsCc7

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) December 14, 2021

telegraph | The omicron epidemic is being driven by young, vaccinated people, according to mounting data from countries as diverse as the UK, Denmark and South Africa.

The new variant has now been detected in more than 60 countries, including 24 in Europe, with a similar pattern of infection and characteristics being reported across the globe.

But while the speed and the vaccine evading properties of the virus are now established, there is as yet no firm verdict on its virulence or severity.

“Generally those first cases are in relatively young, relatively healthy and – in the context of Europe – in relatively highly vaccinated groups,” Dr Catherine Smallwood, a senior emergency officer at the World Health Organization’s Europe office, told the Telegraph.

Data from Denmark – a world leader in genetic sequencing – shows that, of 3,437 omicron cases detected, just over 70 per cent have been among those younger than 40, according to the breakdown from the Statens Serum Institut published on Monday.

Some 75 per cent of these cases were in fully vaccinated individuals, the institute added, confirming that even the double jabbed can carry the virus.

Daily cases in Denmark have surged by a third since early December, despite almost 80 per cent of the population being double vaccinated.

The country tightened restrictions at the end of last week – introducing a midnight curfew on bars and restaurants and closing schools early for the Christmas holidays – but experts estimate omicron could become the dominant variant as soon as Wednesday.

Neighbouring Norway, which has so far reported 958 cases, also introduced new Covid control measures on Monday, with the Prime Minister warning that the situation is “serious”.

Preliminary data suggests the pattern of spread is, so far, similar worldwide.

Analysis from the European Centre for Disease Control found 72 per cent of early cases were in those under 40, while the US said the majority of the 43 infections detected so far were in this same age bracket. American authorities also revealed that 79 per cent of people infected were vaccinated.

Prof Emmanuel Andre, head of the national reference lab for Covid-19 in Belgium, said the country is two weeks behind the UK, where omicron cases jumped by 50 per cent on Monday and the first death with the variant was confirmed.

“Most infections documented at this early stage are among younger age groups,” he told the Telegraph, citing work, travel, sports competitions and schools as possible explanations. But Prof Andre added that Christmas celebrations could “amplify” omicron’s spread.

 

 

Stigmatizing The UnVaxxed An Egregious "Identity Politics" Overreach And Governance FAIL!

opendemocracy  |  Neoliberalism was the form of capitalism that came, chronologically, after colonialism, driving markets back into the public sectors of the former colonial powers, allowing capital to monetise and extract wealth from their soft underbellies. Surveillance capitalism, led by the data giants, is taking its place.

As academic and writer Shoshana Zuboff has argued, under surveillance capitalism, the new biggest companies on the planet make money from drilling markets into our souls. Facebook, Google and Amazon profit by turning each of us into an individual cell of their vast, multidimensional spreadsheets, and pinning us into these corners with endless streams of advertisements telling us who we are and what we need to buy to make us whole.

As cultural politics lecturer Ben Little points out to me, it shouldn’t be any surprise that people respond to a breed of capitalism that exists to sell them new versions of their own identities by pushing back, by insisting that that’s not who they are, nor what it means to be who they are.

Data giants, Little says, want our identities to be hard, static and regimented, so we “align more neatly with commodities”. Anything that challenges this, he argues, “becomes a form of resistance not just to traditional forms of conservative hierarchy” but also to the very logic of modern capitalism.

Largely, this resistance isn’t done individually: it’s done through collective exploration and expression. Because while social media tries to profit by selling people versions of who they might be, it also creates opportunities for connections that allow people to discuss and discover other versions of themselves.

Ultimately, identity is never an individual matter. It’s always about how we relate to each other and make sense of society: if I was the only person I’d ever met, I wouldn’t see myself as having a race or a class or a gender. But it’s also about how we’re related to, and made by, society. The construction of how we see ourselves in the world is always an iterative process – Facebook imposes its algorithm and we build our own groups.

And this isn’t new. National identities were largely invented when capitalist printing presses convened communities in the 19th century. Social media allows people to gather from across the planet in their own communities. Gender roles were foisted on people by church, state and capital. More than ever, we are getting together and reinventing them. The class system was built to facilitate control, and racial hierarchies to justify empire, and people like the Common Sense Group feel a deep sense of moral panic when these identities are prodded, poked and pulled apart.

 

The Show Me State Says "Let Her Rip!"

arstechnica  |  As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rise sharply in Missouri, local health departments are abandoning efforts to stop the spread of the pandemic disease, saying their hands have been tied by the state's attorney general and a recent court ruling.

One local agency, the Laclede County Health Department, northeast of Springfield, announced that it has ceased all COVID-19-related work, including case investigations, contact tracing, quarantine orders, and public announcements of current cases and deaths.

"While this is a huge concern for our agency, we have no other options but to follow the orders of the Missouri Attorney General at this time," the department wrote in a Facebook post on December 9.

Laclede county, which has around 35,000 residents, is averaging 17 new cases per day, a 71 percent increase over two weeks, and test positivity sits at around 9 percent. Hospitalizations have risen 48 percent in the last two weeks. Only 35 percent of the county is fully vaccinated.

Overall, Missouri is currently seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases. The state is averaging over 2,700 new COVID-19 cases per day, a 68 percent increase over the past two weeks. Daily hospitalizations are averaging over 1,700, a 45 percent increase over the past two weeks. Approximately 52 percent of the state is fully vaccinated, well below national coverage, and around a dozen of the state's 114 counties have vaccination percentages in the 20s. 

Still, health officials in Laclede and elsewhere are pulling back rather than ramping up health prevention measures, citing a December 7 letter from state Attorney General Eric Schmitt. The letter informed them of a recent court ruling that stripped state health agencies of a variety of disease-prevention powers, particularly regarding issuing isolation and quarantine orders. "You should stop enforcing and publicizing any such orders immediately," the letter read.

Further Reading

Missouri AG wages war on masks as state blazes with delta cases

The ruling comes from Judge Daniel Green of the Cole County Circuit Court, who entered a judgment on November 22 in the case of Shannon Robinson, et. al., v. Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS). Robinson and her co-plaintiffs challenged health agencies' powers to issue restrictions to prevent the spread of disease, such as ordering quarantines. Attorney General Schmitt defended DHSS in the case and has refused to appeal its outcome.

Green ruled, essentially, that it was unconstitutional for the state to delegate disease prevention powers to unelected health officials.

"The authority that the DHSS regulations purport to grant to an administrative official to implement control measures and create and enforce orders is open-ended discretion—a catch-all to permit naked lawmaking by bureaucrats throughout Missouri," Green wrote in his judgment.

Specifically, Green ruled that regulations 19 CSR 20-20.040(2) G-I, 19 CSR 20-20.040(6), and 19 CSR 20-20.050(3) all violate the state's constitution (codes found here, highlighted in yellow). Collectively, those regulations charge local health authorities with the responsibility of establishing disease-control measures, investigating clusters or outbreaks of illness, and implementing appropriate control measures when necessary. Those control measures can include isolation, quarantine, disinfection, immunization, establishment closures, notification of people potentially exposed, and communication with the public over potential risks and prevention strategies. Regulation 19 CSR 20-20.050(3) specifically deals with quarantine and isolation powers and authorizes closures of schools and other public and private gathering places.

Green wrote in his judgment that local health officials should refrain from taking actions on communicable disease prevention "that require independent discretion in a manner inconsistent with this opinion."

 

Jackson County Mask Mandate Gets Slapped To The Pavement

fox4kc  |  The Jackson County Legislature voted against a mask mandate Monday morning. The resolution failed by a vote of 5-4.

Supporters of the resolution cited an increase in COVID-19 cases in the county as one of the reasons the mandate was necessary.

“Jackson County, as well as the surrounding counties, are classified as high transmission areas,” Bridgette Shaffer, director of the Jackson County Health Department, told legislators before the vote.

Shaffer also said Jackson County has seen an increase in COVID-19 cases for six weeks in a row with a 150% case rate increase. She reported that every age group has seen an increase in COVID-19 cases from October to November. Because of that, the Jackson County Health Department said it recommends masking.

Jackson County Executive Frank White said he also supports the resolution.

“Politics is temporary; health care is forever. So we just have to remember that this is an issue that has become publicized and politicalized,” White said.

“I think we have to do everything we possibly can to save lives,” Jackson County Legislator Ronald Finley said.

But not everyone agreed with the idea during Monday’s meeting.

“There are a number of issues with this legislation that makes it even inappropriate for us to consider a vote on. First of all, it is against state Statute 67.265, which places a 180-day prohibition on expired or terminated health orders,” Jackson County Legislator Jeanie Lauer said.

Monday’s vote came a month after Jackson County Legislators voted to end the county’s mask mandate.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt also said the mask mandate is illegal and warned legislators in a letter on Friday.

 

Pfizer Bets On Bowel Disease

cnbc  | Pfizer said on Monday it would buy drug developer Arena Pharmaceuticals for $6.7 billion in cash, to add a promising treatment candidate that targets diseases affecting the stomach and intestine.

The $100 per share offer is double the last closing price of Arena’s shares, which surged 92% to $95.90 in premarket trading.

This is the latest deal Pfizer has struck this year to expand its treatment pipeline. The company last month acquired immuno-oncology company Trillium Therapeutics for about $2.22 billion to strengthen its arsenal of blood cancer therapies.

Arena is developing several treatments for gastroenterology, dermatology and cardiology. Its lead candidate, etrasimod, is being tested in a late-stage study in ulcerative colitis, as well as a mid-to-late stage study in Crohn’s disease, both types of inflammatory bowel diseases that cause ulcers in the digestive tract.

Pfizer is also developing a treatment for ulcerative colitis, a chronic and inflammatory bowel disease that affects 3 million people in the United States. The candidate is currently in a mid-stage study, which is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

“The proposed acquisition of Arena complements our capabilities and expertise in inflammation and immunology,” Pfizer executive Mike Gladstone said, adding the company plans to accelerate the clinical development of etrasimod.

″(Arena) was our top pick for 2022, so Christmas came a bit early... We would not expect another bidder to come in at this point,” said Wells Fargo analyst Derek Archila.

Archila said he expects positive data from the late-stage trial based on etrasimod’s performance in an earlier study. He estimated peak sales of $2.5 billion, assuming the treatment is approved and is found to be more effective than Bristol Myers Squibb’s currently-approved Zeposia.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022.  Fist tap Big Don.

 

Rep. Jonathan Carroll Told To Stick His Unvaxxed Tax Straight Up His Funky Ass..,

suntimes  |  After receiving “violent threats,” a state rep from suburban Cook County won’t pursue a proposal requiring unvaccinated Illinoisans to pay their health care expenses — including hospital bills — out of pocket if they contract COVID-19.

State Rep. Jonathan Carroll, D-Northbrook, said in a statement Thursday that he decided not to pursue the legislation he filed earlier in the week because of the “unintended divisive nature” of the proposal. He has since filed a motion with the clerk of the Illinois House to table the measure.

He added that based on feedback and further reflection on the legislation “we need to heal as a country and work together on commonsense solutions to put the pandemic behind us.”

“Since taking office, I’ve always tried to have civil discourse with those who’ve disagreed with me,” Carroll said. “However, violent threats made against me, my family and my staff are reprehensible. I hope we can return to a more positive discourse on public health, especially when it comes to this pandemic that has tired us all.”

In an interview with the Sun-Times, Carroll said the violent threats from a “bunch of different people” included death threats and racial slurs and mentioned Carroll’s wife and children. Someone even sent an email to Carroll’s rabbi, threatening the synagogue he attends. Carroll said he reported the threats to the Illinois State Police, who declined to comment.

Someone also published his home address on Twitter; Carroll reported that to the social media site and the information was removed. 

“This is ridiculous,” Carroll said. “We just can’t have a reasonable conversation anymore, we can’t have conversations with people about these things. I’ve heard from reasonable people that do disagree with my bill — and I appreciate them being reasonable and I appreciate them making their point — but if you want to just go the route of calling people names, and calling people like racial slurs, and threatening them and things like that, it’s impossible to have conversations at that point.”

 

Google "Frist HCA" If You Want To Appreciate The Irony Of Frist Interviewing Faulkner...,

LATimes  |  Ridiculous, seemingly arbitrary price markups are a defining characteristic of the $4-trillion U.S. healthcare system — and a key reason Americans pay more for treatment than anyone else in the world.

But to see price hikes of as much as 675% being imposed in real time, automatically, by a hospital’s computer system still takes your breath away.

I got to view this for myself after a former operating-room nurse at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas shared with me screenshots of the facility’s electronic health record system.

The nurse asked that I not use her name because she’s now working at a different Southern California medical facility and worries that her job could be endangered.

Her screenshots, taken earlier this year, speak for themselves.

What they show are price hikes ranging from 575% to 675% being automatically generated by the hospital’s software.

The eye-popping increases are so routine, apparently, the software even displays the formula it uses to convert reasonable medical costs to billed amounts that are much, much higher.

For example, one screenshot is for sutures — that is, medical thread, a.k.a. stitches. Scripps’ system put the basic “cost per unit” at $19.30.

But the system said the “computed charge per unit” was $149.58. This is how much the patient and his or her insurer would be billed.

The system helpfully included a formula for reaching this amount: "$149.58 = $19.30 + ($19.30 x 675%).”

You read that right. Scripps’ automated system took the actual cost of sutures, imposed an apparently preset 675% markup and produced a billed amount that was orders of magnitude higher than the true price.

This is separate from any additional charges for the doctor, anesthesiologist, X-rays or hospital facilities.

Call it institutionalized price gouging. And it’s apparently widespread because the same or similar software is used by other hospitals nationwide, including UCLA, and around the world.

Why The American Military Industrial Complex Is In A Costly Freefall

spectator |  (Ret.) Col. Doug Macgregor, writing in the American Conservative in October:

The generals always knew that the public admission of failure would not simply throw 20 years of graft and deceit into sharp relief; such an admission would expose the four stars themselves to serious scrutiny. To explain the rapid collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan state and the inexcusable waste of American blood and treasure, the American people would discover the long process of moral and professional decline in the senior ranks of the Army and the Marines, their outdated doctrine, thinking, and organization for combat. For the generals it was always better to preserve the façade in Kabul, propping up the illusion of strength, than face the truth.

It was as if the Afghanistan debacle had finally ripped the last scab off the military’s role in the failed enterprise. Suddenly the superstar warrior/monk generals for whom the mainstream media had written endless paeans, before which members of Congress had bowed and scraped, were under the garish light of delayed circumspection.

As a result, there is plenty of talk about what went wrong and what shape the military is in for the future. And certainly just focusing on “the generals” would be shortsighted. This is about the institution — for which America’s trust is actually plummeting. So can the military really afford not to take stock of the cultural, institutional — and yes, political — changes that have swept over it in the last 20 years or more?

“My major concern is military effectiveness,” says (Ret.) Marine Corps. Capt. Dan Grazier, who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in a tank battalion and is now a military analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, “that in the rare event where the military does need to be deployed that we can be the most effective, lethal force possible when the situation calls for it.”

After interviews with several infantry veterans who served in the post-9/11 wars, The American Spectator picked up on a familiar theme as the main obstacle for rebuilding the forces and the faith: leadership corrupted by careerism and influenced by outside interests that don’t always coincide with the interests of the national defense.

The forces aren’t healthy: whose fault?

To Grazier’s mind, after 20 years of constant deployments the military is “going to naturally decay.” It’s impossible to sustain systems on a tempo of that measure without undergoing entropy. According to the most recent RAND Corporation study on deployments, 2.7 million service members have served in 5.4 million deployments across the globe since 2001. The National Guard and reserves account for about 35 percent of the total (as of 2015). In fact, thanks to COVID, wildfires, border patrol, and the extra security put on the nation’s capital in January, the Guard was used in 2020 more than any time since World War II. Missions peaked in June when more than 120,000 of its 450,000 members were on duty here or abroad.

Gil Barndollar, who served in Afghanistan with the Marines and is now a fellow with Defense Priorities, says retention will be a concern. These “citizen soldiers” have “become an operational reserve, not the strategic reserve they were originally intended to be,” he told the Spectator. “Manpower is a rollercoaster, the effects on recruiting and retention always have a lag after events and policy decisions.”

He laments that the Guard, of which he is currently a member, has been used to augment the active duty force so that it can maintain what has become protracted, unending overseas conflicts, often using resources and equipment that are needed stateside, particularly helicopters necessary to fight wildfires in western states.

“It hasn’t been just a long year, it’s been a long 20 years,” Army Maj. Gen. Bret Daugherty, commander of the Washington state Guard, said back in January. “I just want to focus on that. We’re all consumed with our domestic operations right now, but it is simultaneous with our overseas deployments, which have not let up one iota.”

Unfortunately, instead of pouring resources and energy into maintaining readiness, much of Washington’s zeal today is about throwing money at shiny new objects: big-ticket weapons systems, ships, and aircraft that either take years to build, become obsolete, or don’t work. A boon to the Beltway defense lobby, not so much for the fighting forces.

“The military has gotten into a lot of bad habits over the last 20 years. If you look at the amount of money that was thrown at the Pentagon, it’s created a lack of discipline,” Grazier charges. “After 9/11 the floodgates were opened wide. That played to the worst tendencies of the military industrial congressional complex.”

Out Of Office, What Do The Hard-Grifting Clintons Have Left To Peddle?

dailycaller |  The Clinton Foundation’s rapid decline in donor cash has alarmed top ethics watchdogs who say it shows clear red flags of political corruption.

Financial disclosures show a precipitous decline in contributions to the Clinton Foundation in the years following former president Bill Clinton and former first lady Hillary Clinton’s fall from the heights of their political power.

The Clinton Foundation received roughly $16.3 million in contributions in 2020, according to their newly released Form 990. This was a 93.6% decrease from the nearly $250 million the charitable organization raked in during 2009 after Hillary Clinton was appointed Secretary of State.

“For years, the Clinton Foundation raised ethical concerns and blurred lines between the foundation, private entities, and the State Department,” said Scott Amey, General Counsel for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a nonpartisan, independent government corruption watchdog organization.

“Money was pouring in when Hillary Clinton was a senior official and a candidate for president. The fact that foundation donors received special access to the Secretary of State isn’t surprising, nor is the fall in foundation funding after her 2016 election loss. Many people thought people were supporting the former president, but it really looks like they were cozying up to who they thought was going to be the future president — a situation that can’t be repeated,” the POGO General Counsel told the Daily Caller.

“Now, with ethics concerns raised about Mnuchin and Kushner, as well as judges, it is vital that Congress put politics aside and pass an ethics reform package for all three branches of government. Congress must eliminate conflicts of interest, restrict special access, prevent trading on insider knowledge, and stop public servants who cash in for personal or private gain. Recent surveys show that corruption is a major public concern, but with the foxes guarding the henhouse, I’m unsure who will step forward to fix the problem,” said Amey.

“We’ve been seeing a decline in the cash flow to the Clinton Foundation since the 2016 presidential election,” Anna Massoglia told the Daily Caller. Massoglia is an Investigative Researcher at OpenSecrets, a non-profit transparency organization that tracks money in politics.

The Investigative Researcher said that when OpenSecrets spoke with the Clinton Foundation, they explained the strained revenue stream was “due to a lack of events due to an inability to have conferences” and “receiving less money from fundraising events, programs, and services.” Massoglia reasoned that “it would make sense for there to be a significant decrease in 2020 since there were even less in-person events around that time.”

“During the presidential election, of course, Clinton had said that they were going to step back from the foundation for the duration of the election, and if she came into office, that they would wind things down. However, because she was not elected, it was not expected that the foundation would get smaller for any other reason, at least externally,” added Massoglia.

In 2018, Massoglia and OpenSecrets were the first to obtain the Clinton Foundation’s annual 990 Form that showed a $38.4 million revenue stream. While slightly higher than the previous year, donations were still significantly lower than in years when Hillary or Bill Clinton were more influential in American politics.

 

“It Is Dangerous To Be Right In Matters On Which The Established Authorities Are Wrong.” ― Voltaire

americanthinker |  I just finished reading an article on the Big Think website titled "When science mixes with politics, all we get is politics," by Professor Marcelo Gleiser, theoretical physicist, Dartmouth College.  I mistakenly thought the commentary would decry the misuse of science by politicians, but no.  Instead, it decries the mistrust that we, the unwashed masses, have developed for the science establishment in recent years.  Unwittingly, the eminent professor gives us yet more reasons to regard science insiders with skepticism.

He does what so many of his colleagues do, which is to equate science itself with the institutions that purport to advance science.  To question politicized scientists, then, is supposedly unscientific.

Censorship of actual science has been heavy-handed, both by Democrats and by their Big Tech acolytes.  Epidemiologists, virologists, and physicians who do not toe the party line regarding COVID have been intimidated and silenced.  Science that cannot be openly questioned is not science, since the heart and soul of science are to scrutinize every claim from every angle.  If we are to be told we must follow the science, then scientists must explain to us the inductive reasoning that was applied to exclude members of Congress, and their staffs, from the COVID restrictions they imposed on the rest of us.  If scientists are to decry those of us who doubt their word, then they must equally decry the policy of distributing unvaccinated, untested illegal aliens to every state, while denying entry to legal travelers.

To decry only the skeptics, while ignoring the egregious anti-science of many politicians, does nothing to engender trust in the institutions of science.  It does the opposite.

 

Polarization And Tipping Points

scienceblog  |  As polarization has escalated in the U.S., the question of if and when that divide becomes insurmountable has become ever more pressing. In a new study, researchers have identified a tipping point, beyond which extreme polarization becomes irreversible.

The researchers employed a predictive model of a polarized group, similar to the current U.S. Senate, to reveal what can happen when the country faces an attack by a foreign adversary or a global pandemic.

“Instead of uniting against a common threat,” said lead author Michael Macy, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Sociology and director of the Social Dynamics Laboratory in the College of Arts and Sciences, “the threat itself becomes yet another polarizing issue.”

“Polarization and Tipping Points” published Nov. 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The model allows researchers to study the effects of party identity and political intolerance on ideological extremism and partisan division.

“We found that polarization increases incrementally only up to a point,” Macy said. “Above this point, there is a sudden change in the very fabric of the institution, like the change from water to steam when the temperature exceeds the boiling point.”

The dynamics resemble what physicists call “hysteresis loops.”

“We see this very disturbing pattern in which a shock brings people a little bit closer initially, but if polarization is too extreme, eventually the effects of a shared fate are swamped by the existing divisions and people become divided even on the shock issue,” said co-author Boleslaw Szymanski, a professor of computer science and director of the Army Research Laboratory Network Science and Technology Center (NeST) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  “If we reach that point, we cannot unite even in the face of war, climate change, pandemics, or other challenges to the survival of our society.”

The work builds on an earlier general model Szymanski developed to study the interactions of legislators in a two-party political system. Although the model isn’t specifically tuned to distinctive practices, customs, and rules of the U.S. Congress, it was trained using data, and previous research comparing model outcomes to 30 years of Congressional voting records demonstrated strong predictive power. In one finding from that work, the model accurately predicted the shift in polarization in 28 of 30 U.S. Congresses.

There Is No Common Conversation In The U.S. Today

strategic-culture |  COVID-19 is another revelation that there are two separate islands of opinion. Take, for example, the simple factual question – yes or no – did Dr Fauci’s organisation fund gain-of-function experiments in the Wuhan laboratory? A rather important matter, one would think. Snopes, that reliable defender of the status quo, says “unproven” in May in a long-winded piece. Denied by Fauci in May: “The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Two Pinocchios said the WaPo. But finally admitted in October: “a top official at the National Institutes of Health has conceded that contrary to the repeated assertions of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIH did indeed fund highly dangerous gain-of-function research on bat-borne coronaviruses in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” And more: “The annual report described the group’s work from June 2017 to May 2018, which involved creating new viruses using different parts of existing bat coronaviruses and inserting them into humanized mice in a lab in Wuhan, China. The work was overseen by the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Anthony Fauci.” And so May’s conspiracy theory became October’s fact.

Did the virus leak from these US-funded experiments? No one knows but it cannot be ruled out. As to Dr Fauci himself, he may have overreached by telling his critics that he represents science; when even the WaPo carries a piece entitled “Fauci Can’t Use Science to Excuse His Missteps” perhaps his best-before date is nearing. Despite the prayer candles. In this respect, the fate of Robert Kennedy’s book, The Real Dr Fauci, is indicative; it’s Number One on Amazon with 96% five-star ratings. This is the more remarkable because of the full-scale attack on him from the establishment media: he is “the dumbest Kennedy“; “race-baiting ‘documentary’ and disinformation to advance bogus theories and seed anti-vaccine sentiment“; “documented history of promoting debunked theories about vaccines“; banned on social media. Tucker Carlson, in “a new escalation of his anti-science rhetoric”, had an interview “with longtime anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” Nonetheless, a lot of people are buying and reading it. These media campaigns don’t work as well as they used to. Indeed the 29% who had no trust at all probably believe the reverse of what the conventional media says. I know I do: if they’re all shouting the sane thing, I take it as a powerful indicator that the opposite is true. We should read Western media the way the Soviets read theirs.

However, there are unrelenting attempts to create conspiracy theories that all Americans can agree on. For years we have had the conspiracy theory that Putin is behind everything bad; in its current manifestation he’s about to invade Ukraine (or as the US Defense Secretary put it: “an incursion by the Soviet Union into the Ukraine“). Another fast-growing set of conspiracy theories focus on China, the “Wuhan lab leak” being one example. (Dangerous that because of Fauci’s funding of GoF research in Wuhan). China is about to invade Taiwan or starving Uyghers are forced to stuff themselves with pork or tennis players are disappeared; these conspiracy theories are safer. One of the principal pushers of the first conspiracy theory is switching to the other: he senses the change in the party line. And there’s always North Korea where the rats eat the babies and the babies eat the rats.

The China conspiracy theory seems to be working – a survey by the Reagan Foundation found that 52% saw China as the “greatest threat” to the USA (Russia well behind at 14% and North Korea just behind it at 12%). Three years ago Russia was 30% to China’s 21%. More striking is that China has gained twenty points since February. Can the Putin-won-2016/Trump-won-2020 divide be bridged by a Chinadunnit conspiracy theory?

But agreeing on a common enemy is one thing, the internal divisions are something else. In this respect the Reagan Foundation survey cited above is indicative. It finds that disbelief is spreading rapidly in the American population: trust in all institutions is dropping; confidence in the US military is dropping; support for active global leadership is dropping. A survey just now shows a slight majority of American youth regarding their democracy as in trouble. Not the strongest foundation for more foreign adventures.

A deeply divided country: there is no common conversation in the United States today – one person’s conspiracy theory is another’s truth.

Impotent Mask-Compliant Rage...,

theguardian  |  High among the unexpected, non-health compensations of masks is their value as shorthand. At the same time as they impede communication, they offer, anywhere that people exhibit extreme non-compliance, a rapid non-verbal personality indicator that is rivalled only, I would argue, by manspreading. Of course there are many other single but baleful inducements to run for the hills – personalised number plates, not tipping, devotion to the works of Ayn Rand or Judith Butler – but these may take time to discover or may even, on rare occasions, be redeemable.

Mask aversion once fell, just about, into that category. Last summer, anti-maskers could argue that they preferred the previous official guidance. Jenny Harries, now head of the UK Health Security Agency, had indeed treated the world’s mask-wearing nations to her superior, anti-mask theory in March 2020. “You can actually trap the virus in the mask and start breathing it in,” she said. Incredibly, or perhaps as a result if Johnson was involved, she was promoted.

As evidence has mounted to back mask efficacy, Johnson, even with this stimulus to lead by example, has treated masks as if they were a lefty plot against his face. A masked audience watching Macbeth recently noticed that the prime minister, squished into a crowded little theatre, preferred to follow the on-stage psychopathy with his face uncovered. In doing so, he perhaps revealed more about himself than idiot contrariness. Low compliance with containment measures was directly associated in one study with “antisocial traits, especially lower levels of empathy and higher levels of callousness, deceitfulness and risk-taking”. Though it’s too late to save us from Johnson, the psychology of mask behaviour might help to screen out another leader who shouts, when discouraged: “Let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

Meanwhile, we may be getting closer to understanding the MPs who last week voted, in defiance of scientific advice and majority opinion, against protecting public health. Weren’t they once great respecters of majorities, even narrow ones? But it’s pointless to expect logic. Like the Macbeths, they simply couldn’t help themselves.

Only The 2nd Amendment Keeps Americans From Getting The Iron Boot

unherd |  Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s just blind prejudice, but when I wake to the news that the Austrian government has interned an entire third of its national population as a danger to public health, a chill runs down my spine.

I look at the news photos of armed, masked, black-clad police stopping people in the streets to ask for their digital papers, and I read stories of others arrested for leaving their own house more than the permitted once a day, and I hear Austrian politicians intoning that those who refuse to accede to the injection are to be shunned and scapegoated until they acquiesce.

Then I watch interviews with “ordinary people”, and they say that the “unvaxxed” had it coming. Some of them say that they should all be jailed, these enemies of the people. At best, the “anti-vaxxers” are paranoid and misinformed. At worst they are malicious, and should be punished.

Then I look across the border at Germany. I see that in Germany, politicians are also considering interning the “vaccine hesitant”, and are also discussing enforcing vaccination upon every citizen. By the end of the winter, says Germany’s refreshingly honest health minister, Germans will be “vaccinated, cured or dead”. There is apparently no fourth option.

They have been busy in Germany. Recently they put up fences in the streets in Hamburg, to separate the Bad Unvaxxed from the Good Vaxxed at the Christmas markets. Outdoors. Perhaps they will also provide the Good people with rocks to throw across those fences. The mood certainly seems ripe. A cartoon recently published in the mainstream, high-circulation newspaper Frankfürter Allgemeine Zeitung featured a man sitting on his sofa playing a first-person shooter game in which the targets were unvaccinated people. The caption described it as “a big hit under the Christmas tree.”

Not that Germans or Austrians have any monopoly on the current march towards authoritarianism in the name of public health. It is entirely globalised. The opinion recently expressed by Pulitzer Prize-winning American art critic Jerry Saltz to his half a million Twitter followers was typical of a new form of class hatred that is somehow acceptable in the age of cancellations and hyper-sensitivity. “My latest Covid thought is ‘Let her rip:’”, he wrote. “Meaning, we who are lucky enough to be triple & double vaxed are pretty protected. Let the rest die. I know they pose a danger to us all. But we are more than 97% protected from them. If they want to die, I say let them die. Freedom.”

Across Europe and the wider world, the picture is the same. Internment. Mandatory medication. Segregation of whole sections of society. Mass sackings. A drumbeat media consensus. The systematic censoring of dissent. The deliberate creation of a climate of fear and suspicion. The deepening demonisation of the “unvaxxed”. Something terrible is rising around us, and we are only just waking up to it.

 

Omicron Bussin Through mRNA Goo Like Hotcakes...,

 

der tagespiegel |  A group of seven Germans between the ages of 25 and 39 were infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in South Africa, even though all of them have already received their booster vaccination. This is what Wolfgang Preiser, a member of the research consortium that discovered the variant, told Tagesspiegel.

“We're seeing a lot of breakthrough infections right now. What we did not know is that even a booster vaccination with Biontech / Pfizer does not prevent this, "Preiser explained to the Tagesspiegel. These infections are the first breakthrough infections reported with the Omicron variant in people who have already received their booster vaccinations.

[Also read: "Live on in your illusion" -  w wants hen's best friend Corona with globules defeat (T +)]

“Of course you shouldn't misunderstand that vaccination doesn't help. On the contrary: It only shows that even the best possible vaccination is obviously not enough to prevent infection - which we already suspected, "said Preiser.

According to a study published by Preiser and his colleagues on the case on Thursday, the tour group was infected as early as late November or early December.

All seven had received at least two of their three vaccinations with an mRNA vaccine. Six of them received the booster vaccine from Biontech, one from Moderna. Six people are under 30 years old and one person is 39 years old.

These vaccines were given to people in this order:

• People 1 to 5: Biontech, Biontech, Biontech
• Person 6: Biontech, Biontech, Moderna
• Person 7: Astrazeneca, Biontech, Biontech

The booster vaccinations were given to the subjects between five and ten months after the second vaccinations. The booster vaccinations were at least a month, but a maximum of two months ago, according to the study. Those affected were among those vaccinated very early in Germany.

According to the study, none of the seven infected people had relevant previous illnesses and none had previously tested positive. Four of them did medical internships in various local hospitals, the other three were on vacation. When they arrived in South Africa in the first half of November, they all tested negative.