Dissecting Leftism

Tuesday, April 02, 2024

Study Finds New Drugs Effective Against COVID-19 and Other Viruses

Studying the ways viruses impact cellular pathways during infection may help in developing treatments for infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

A new study, conducted by researchers at the University of Alberta and published in the npj Viruses journal found that certain cancer treatment drugs can promote cells to secrete antiviral interferons. These drugs target the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, and are also effective against multiple pathogenic RNA viruses.

Interferons are natural proteins that bolster the body’s immune system in combating infections and diseases like cancer. They earned their name because they interfere with viruses, stopping them from spreading.

Both COVID-19 and some cancers activate the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway—a chain reaction inside the cell. Drugs that block this pathway, originally made to treat cancer, might also help fight COVID-19.

When the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway gets activated, it slows down the production of interferons. This pathway also negatively impacts the immune system.

In a study, scientists tested two drugs, KYA1797K and E7449, that block the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway. They found that these drugs reduced the amount of virus in the lungs of mice. The drug E7449 was especially good at preventing weight loss and lung damage in the infected mice.

Tom Hobman, a professor of cell biology at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and one of the study authors, explained in a press release that after using these drugs, cells produced interferons in response to viral infections at levels four to six times higher than before. Additionally, experiments also revealed that the virus was inactivated to less than one-ten-thousandth of its original levels.

He pointed out that interferons prevent infected cells from producing more viruses primarily in two ways, “It shuts down the infected cell, often resulting in cell death, and it also acts on the surrounding cells to prevent them from being infected.”

The researchers also tested viruses other than COVID-19 and found that the drugs exhibit broad-spectrum activity against a variety of RNA viruses. These include coronaviruses, responsible for seasonal respiratory infections, as well as mosquito-borne viruses like Zika and Mayaro.

Ongoing Drug Trials for COVID-19

In addition to drugs targeting the Wnt/β-catenin pathway, other drugs are also being explored for the potential to alleviate the COVID-19 virus.

A clinical trial published in February, which involved 1,821 mild to moderate COVID-19 patients, indicated that a drug called ensitrelvir significantly shortened the duration of symptoms in patients with COVID-19.

A phase II to III clinical trial of the anti-COVID-19 drug Simnotrelvir, involving 1,208 patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 infection, was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results showed that patients who received Simnotrelvir treatment within 72 hours of COVID-19 symptom onset had their “time to sustained resolution of symptoms” shortened by 35.8 hours. In a subgroup with risk factors for severe COVID-19, Simnotrelvir reduced the time by 60 hours.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/study-finds-new-drugs-effective-against-covid-19-and-other-viruses-5611023

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Immunologists Call Out mRNA Vaccines—The Good, Bad & Ugly: Time to Go Back to Science

More data and analysis from various peer-reviewed journals raises serious concerns about the externalities associated with the mass countermeasures developed by the United States government in response to COVID-19. While the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been positioned as modern marvels of medicine—safety, effective and representative of the future of medicine, mounting literature not widely touted by American media implicates a different point of view.

Microbiologist and immunologist Botond Z. Igyártó, Ph.D., from Jefferson University in Philadelphia and immunology researcher Zhen Qin in the most recent edition of the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Immunology suggest the latest, accumulation of data points to the need for concern covering both safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna in partnership with the National Institutes of Health and Pfizer in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech.

TrialSite has published article after article over the past couple years hinting at considerable challenges with mRNA platforms. The literature in the peer-reviewed journals amasses leading to questions for investors in the platform developers.

The authors herein call out for a security that represents an absolute must for the scientific community. With an unprecedented mass vaccination scheme via the use of an investigational product “that minimally protects from getting infected and spreading the virus during a pandemic,” the need for critical reflection becomes of paramount concern.

Was the strategy sound? Was her immunity a realistic expectation? Did the strategy as proposed by Geert Vanden Bossche lead to an actual acceleration of mutations? Should governments have focused on more vulnerable populations during the pandemic? Why was a novel mRNA platform opted for in the emergency over more known methods? Why focus on a single virus protein with a high mutation rate as TrialSite called out early on? Were the vaccine’s benefits (supposedly faster production, ease of updating for new variants, etc.) beneficial? Why did research leadership at the NIH for example ignore basic immunology knowledge during the pandemic?

Igyártó and Qin in this latest peer-reviewed output identify safety considerations, seeking to better understand the mechanisms of observed adverse events related to the mRNA jabs. Can such identified risk factors be mitigated by altering the mRNA platforms?

Describing the standard and non-standard components of the mRNA-LNP COVID-19 vaccines, Igyártó and Qin then address what the pair of authors describe as “concerning” assumptions made in regard to this technology.

While formally, the public has been told that mRNA vaccines do not allow for reverse transcription into DNA, meaning that there is no risk of insertion into the human genome, the authors raise some questions for consideration.

In particular instances, RNA can in fact be reverse transcribed into DNA. The authors note, “With the Pfizer mRNA-LNP vaccine, it has been shown experimentally that the vaccine mRNA can be reverse-transcribed into DNA in an immortalized human hepatocyte cell line.”

Also, the pair of authors note other possibilities for this concerning action, plus localization of the spike protein. A series of studies suggest the possibility of transcribed possibilities.

The authors point out:

“While to our knowledge similar studies have not been performed with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines that code for full-length pre-fusion fixed form of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, comparable transport of spike protein/mRNA to the nucleus could be expected. Because the mRNA can enter the nucleus, where it might be reverse-transcribed into DNA, this increases its potential to integrate into the genome.

Furthermore, the mRNA-LNP diffuses throughout the body and can accumulate in both the testes and ovaries and is reported to alter the menstrual cycle in women. Therefore, it could potentially be reaching the stem cells of the reproductive organs. These findings highlight the need to take these data and concerns seriously and conduct specific experiments to address them.”

On the topic of the mRNA vaccine product degrading in vivo in hours or a matter of a few days, the authors challenge this misinformation to argue that the vaccines do not disrupt normal cell biology.

While it’s likely that this assumption (rapid product degradation) likely arose given that unmodified mRNAs have overall short in vivo half-life, real-world since points to a very different situation.

For example, “…human lymph node biopsies taken at different time points post-exposure to the mRNA-LNP revealed detectable levels of vaccine mRNA and spike proteins up to eight weeks.” And of course, TrialSite has reported on peer-reviewed data featuring the distribution and circulation of spike protein derived from the mRNA vaccines in humans for periods over a year.

Also, the effects of modified ribonucleotides (incorporated into the vaccine products to lower innate reactogenicity) just recently became more apparent.

Igyártó and Qin point out, “Incorporation of N1-methylpseudouridine into mRNA resulted in +1 ribosomal frameshifting in vitro and cellular immunity in mice and humans to +1 frameshifted products from BNT162b2 vaccine mRNA translation occurred after vaccination.”

A key message from the authors on the overall topics: it’s dangerous to “assume and extrapolate in science” then apply existing paradigms to novel, untested platforms and technologies.

And just how safe and effective are the COVID-19 mRNA countermeasures?

Reviewing many of the same recent peer-reviewed journal entries, case reports and publicly available adverse event database as TrialSite, the current authors argue that this fact “cast doubts on the safety and effectiveness of these products.”

For example, on the topic of safety the authors point to a range of formidable entries calling out one concern to another. As TrialSite has editorialized many of the studies cited by Igyártó and Qin on the topic of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine safety suggest concern.

Similar outcomes can be found when probing efficacy. As the authors point out, “The effectiveness of these therapeutics in preventing infections and limiting the spreading of the virus has been highly eroded from the early reports, and nowadays, their efficacy is mainly limited to potentially decreasing the disease severity and death in susceptible people.” Pointing out that the efficacy that has been reported likens to the immune suppressive characteristics of these mRNA products, the authors urge for a “rigorous pre-clinical studies to limit potential unexpected consequences for novel platforms.”

Final Thoughts

Pointing out that “several fundamental questions persist surrounding the pandemic measures and the adoption of this new vaccine platform,” the scientists cogently argue “rather than advocating for retraction and censorship” rather there should be a movement in science to foster for open dialogue, considering all perspectives.

And for those that despite the findings above would still justify all that was done during the pandemic as the efforts saved lives, Igyártó and Qin point out that “the robustness of supporting data raises important inquiries.”

True trust is necessary to not undermine science and foster vaccine hesitancy, argue the authors of this important peer-reviewed paper. Seek to rebuild trust? Then, the authors argue it’s “crucial to return to the fundamental principles of scientific inquiry

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/immunologists-call-out-mrna-vaccinesthe-good-bad-ugly-time-to-go-back-to-science-43567db9

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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Monday, April 01, 2024

COVID-19 Vaccines Performance Decline--Only 38% of At Risk Immunocompromised Kept out of Hospital

TrialSite continues to monitor the observational study output of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded VISION Network, a research collaboration involving multiple hospitals/sites with integrated electronic health records (EHR) across America. This is part of an ongoing real-world data effort to evaluate how well vaccines protect against seasonal viruses such as influenza or COVID-19.

In this latest study, the substantial VISION team utilizes a test-negative design to estimate COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE). And the outcomes are not great, in fact, some could argue this latest vaccine bombed.

Why? Any commercial vaccine designed to keep people, especially at-risk cohorts out of the hospital, should perform at least at 50% vaccine effectiveness. At 38% between days 7-59 and 34% in the 60-119 days after the receipt of the updated dose, the only reason CDC can justify recommending the product includes A) because they are not considering full safety risks for this cohort and B) the logic that 38% protected is better than no one and for this latter point there is some rationale. Only 14% of immunocompromised opted to get the vaccine suggesting a near collapse in market demand for COVID-19 vaccines given the risks associated with this demographic.

The data reported herein results from the CDC’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Report (MMWR) titled “Interim Effectiveness of Updated 2023-2024 (Monovalent XBB.1.5) COVID-19 Vaccines Against COVID-19–Associated Hospitalization Among Adults Aged ≥18 Years with Immunocompromising Conditions — VISION Network, September 2023–February 2024.

Background

By September 2021, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended updating 2023–2024 (monovalent XBB.1.5) COVID-19 vaccination for all persons aged ≥6 months to prevent COVID-19, including severe disease. The agency did not consider a risk-based approach like in most other nations at this point given the following:

Omicron has become much milder (e.g., case fatality rate at the level of influenza for most)

Large segments of the U.S. population have pre-existing immunity at some level

Growing recognition that some safety signals present (e.g., risk of myocarditis/pericarditis in young males, etc.).

Available treatments such as Paxlovid—while not accepted yet by the National Institutes of Health or the CDC,

accumulation of data that vitamin D supplementation very important to avoid more severe symptomatic COVID-19

The CDC suggests additional boosters for immunocompromised conditions should be considered, in this case representing a risk-based approach to public health.

In this latest observational study, the study team assesses how well the COVID-19 vaccines perform at helping immunocompromised persons infected with COVID-19 avoid hospitalization based on the data linked to hospitalization during the period September 2023-February 2024.

Findings

Few persons (18%) in this high-risk study population had received the updated COVID-19 vaccine. All persons aged ≥6 months should receive updated 2023–2024 COVID-19 vaccination; persons with immunocompromising conditions may get additional updated COVID-19 vaccine doses ≥2 months after the last recommended COVID-19 vaccine.

Out of 14,586 patients with immunocompromising conditions who were hospitalized with COVID–19–like illness, the study team included 1,392 case patients and 13,194 control patients.

The most common immunocompromising conditions among both case patients and control patients were solid organ malignancy (36% and 43%, respectively) and other intrinsic immune conditions or immunodeficiency (38% and 35%, respectively).

A total of 195 (14%) case patients had received an updated COVID-19 vaccine dose compared with 2,401 (18%) control patients. VE against COVID–19–associated hospitalization was 38% in the first

More Specifics

The CDC-funded VISION team reports only nine persons who received >1 updated COVID-19 vaccine dose were included!

The team estimated Odds ratios (ORs) using multivariable logistic regression comparing persons who received an updated COVID-19 vaccine dose with those who did not, irrespective of the number of previous original or bivalent COVID-19 vaccine doses received (if any), among case- and control patients.

They adjusted their regression models for age, sex, race and ethnicity, calendar time, and geographic region. While they calculated VE as (1 − adjusted OR) × 100%. Analyses were conducted using R software (version 4.3.2; R Foundation). This activity was reviewed by CDC, deemed not research, and was conducted consistent with applicable federal law and CDC policy.†† VISION activities were reviewed and approved by the Westat and site institutional review boards.

How does CDC rationalize this VE?

According to the VISION team, “Effectiveness estimates in this report were slightly lower than those in a recently published analysis from VISION and another CDC VE network showing COVID-19 VE against COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in adults without immunocompromising conditions was approximately 50%, but this report includes the analysis of an additional month of data compared with the previous report.”

The group still implies recommended vaccination because “persons with moderate or severe immunocompromising conditions are at higher risk for severe COVID-19 and might have decreased response to vaccination.” (2).

Limitations

The VISION team discloses two primary limitations to this study. These include the following:

The use of selected discharge diagnoses as surrogates for presumed immunocompromised status and the absence of medication and other relevant data might have led to misclassification of immunocompromise status, which might have biased estimated VE in either direction

Immunocompromising conditions are heterogeneous and likely to create differential risk for severe COVID-19, as well as differential response to vaccination

CDC suggested implications

Although the VE of 38% to keep immunocompromised individuals out of the hospital evidences a waning performance (in fact under 50% and regulators used to question the overall value of the vaccine), the CDC team argues that “receipt of an updated COVID-19 vaccine dose provided increased protection against COVID-19–associated hospitalization among adults with immunocompromising conditions compared with no receipt of an updated dose.”

And the CDC takes the increasingly unpopular and isolated decision to continue to recommend that all Americans age ≥6 should get the 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine, regardless of fundamentally changing risk-benefit calculus.

That only 14% of the immunocompromised population opted to get this latest vaccine is most certainly telling of the market’s proclivity to go out and opt for this vaccine. At TrialSite, we have reported on a growing number of peer-reviewed studies evidencing instability in the current mRNA platforms. Is it a good idea to vaccinate children 6 months and above en masse given the risk-benefit calculus factors discussed above? Even the New York Times recently reported on the fact that the U.S. was now an outlier in recommending systematic COVID-19 vaccination of young children, especially when we factor in risks for myocarditis/pericarditis in young healthy males.

We suggest this latest vaccine effectiveness performance portends an ominous future for this class of vaccine.

TrialSite Critical View

The protection of mRNA vaccines is so transient TrialSite suggests a new metric for their assessment, at least when it comes to protection against infection. Peak efficacy in the first few weeks’ post immunisation is clearly completely irrelevant. What about calculating average 6- or 12-month efficacy?

This would be akin to measuring area under survival curve. Hence depending on the shape of the curve a vaccine that had 90% efficacy at two weeks and 10% efficacy at six months, may have an overall 6-month efficacy of say 20% if the curve falls steeply at the start or 60% if it falls steeply at the end.

We know from the Israeli data in July 2021 that Pfizer had fallen to just 12% efficacy at 6 months so its true overall 6-month efficacy must have been less than 50% even although they continued to quote >90% efficacy in the media.

Also say a vaccine drops from 90% efficacy at two weeks to 0% efficacy at 4 months – how then to describe its overall efficacy over 6 months – intuitively it should be 0% not the average as over the last two months no one is protected, so everyone will now get infected if exposed, even if they got some protection over the first 4 months – i.e. their infection was just delayed.

This requires sophisticated biostatistician input. After all, COVID-19 infections are not linear over time, but highly clustered into outbreaks. If an outbreak occurs at the 5-month post vaccine point in the previous example, then true vaccine efficacy is 0% or may even go negative at least when measuring protection against infection.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/cdc-vision-study-covid-19-vaccines-performance-decline-only-38-at-risk-immunocompromised-kept-out-of-hospital-1afb2124

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Study Shows 1 in 5 Australians Experiencing Long COVID After Positive Test

Around one in five Australians who tested positive for COVID-19 displayed symptoms consistent with long COVID, according to a study by the Australian National University (ANU).

This comes after Queensland’s Chief Health Officer John Gerrard called for the term “long COVID” to be scrapped following a study that found the long-term effects of the virus were no different from the seasonal flu, and that long-term COVID symptoms were not “unique and exceptional” to other viral infections.

Long COVID is described by the World Health Organisation as the continuation or development of new symptoms three months after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, with these symptoms lasting for at least two months without any alternative explanation.

The ANU study drew on nearly 71,000 participants in Western Australia (WA) who tested positive for COVID-19 from July 16, 2022, to Aug. 3, 2022.

Of the 70,876 adult participants who consented to the research, 11,697 (16.5 percent) provided complete responses provided by the researchers.

Among the respondents, 2,130 respondents (18.2 percent) satisfied the researchers’ criteria for long COVID—reporting new or ongoing symptoms or health problems 90 days after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result.

The study found the following:

Long COVID risk was greater for women, people aged 50–69 years or with pre-existing health conditions, and those with two or fewer COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Common long COVID symptoms included fatigue and concentration difficulties.

In a highly vaccinated population not broadly exposed to earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, 18 percent of people infected with the Omicron variant reported symptoms consistent with long COVID 90 days after infection.

18 percent of these people had not fully resumed previous work or study by 3 months, and 38 percent required care from general practitioners for their symptoms 2 to 3 months after infection.

Higher Risk of Developing Long COVID from Omicron Variant
Lead researcher Mulu Woldegiorgis said the results show the risk of developing long COVID from the Omicron variant is higher than originally thought.

“It is more than double the prevalence reported in a review of Australian data from earlier in the pandemic, and higher than similar studies done in the UK and Canada,” Ms. Woldegiorgis said.

“Our finding is, however, lower than that of a recent Queensland study, which found that 21 percent of people reported ongoing symptoms twelve weeks after PCR-confirmed infections with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant,” the researchers wrote.

“Despite reports that the risk of long COVID may be lower following Omicron infections than with earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants, we found that the burden of long COVID may be substantial 90 days after Omicron infections.”

Ms. Woldegiorgis added: “The risk of long COVID was greater for women and people aged 50 to 69, as well as those with pre-existing health conditions and people who’d had fewer vaccine doses.”

Additionally, the study found that 90 percent of the study participants with long COVID reported experiencing multiple symptoms, such as tiredness and fatigue (70 percent), followed by difficulty thinking or concentrating (“brain fog”), sleep problems, and coughing.

A third of women with long COVID also reported changes in their menstrual cycle.

“More than a third of individuals with persistent long COVID—38 percent—had sought medical care in the month prior to the survey,” she said.

“This most frequently involved a visit to a GP, hospitalisations or trips to the emergency department were thankfully less common.”

The study also found that 64 percent of participants with long COVID were able to fully return to work or study within a month of their infection, but 18 percent reported still not being well enough to do so three months after their infection.

The authors noted a number of limitations to the study, including the unclear diagnosis of long COVID, not comparing participants to non-positive participants, and not including asymptomatic or undetected infections.

Link Between Vaccination and Long COVID

While the above study did not look at the link between vaccination and the development of long COVID, a study by Germany’s Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg has shown that unvaccinated people infected with the Omicron variant had the lowest risk of long COVID.

The study found that while previous infections reduce the risk of long COVID by 86 percent, vaccination status prior to COVID infection is irrelevant to a person’s risk of developing long COVID.

“Vaccination offered no meaningful protection against developing PCC [post-COVID condition] in case of an infection. In contrast, there was … strong evidence that a previous infection reduced the risk of PCC,” the authors wrote.

However, the authors of the German study acknowledged that none of the participants were given an actual diagnosis of long COVID or tested for comorbidities.

At the same time, a long COVID clinic in England reported a 79 percent drop in referrals that followed the rollout of the second dose of COVID-19 vaccinations, despite having four times as many cases of COVID-19 over the same period.

Meanwhile, a study published by the Lancet found higher rates of lung, brain, and kidney injuries among those with long COVID in the UK, compared with those who did not contract COVID-19.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/1-in-5-australians-experiencing-long-covid-after-positive-test-study-5617692?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=top-news-australia-top-news-8

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Neurologic Devastation Hits Young Canadian Mother Left to Survive in New Post-Vaccine Reality

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

Good doctors learn from every patient they see and hear about. I was very impressed with the vignette disclosed by Kayla Pollock. She courageously appeared with myself and Greg Boulden, the highly acclaimed journalist, producer and managing editor of America Emboldened.

Kayla’s story is similar to the case described by Rabbani et al at the University of Oklahoma. They called what they found “longitudinally-extensive” transverse myelitis, in a 60-year old man who had received a Moderna mRNA vaccine ten days earlier. Transverse myelitis is a form of spinal cord inflammation caused by COVID-19 vaccines that is analogous to a spinal cord transection that would occur with severe trauma.

You have to listen to this report from Kayla, who is a young mother who was already managing Type 1 diabetes. Boulden and myself were shocked with the gaslighting and terrible care she received in the Canadian health system in metro Toronto. Kayla’s story is one of tragedy and perseverance. You can tell that I was trying to view her case on the bright side with suggestions to give her the best chance of recovery (Base Spike Detoxification, high-dose corticosteroids, IVIG, plasma exchange, rituximab, hyperbaric oxygen, advanced physiotherapy).

The interview turned dark when Kayla told us that the Canadian government, instead of doing everything they could to help her recover, offered MAID. Canada updated its law on medical assistance in dying (MAID) in 2021 to allow people with “grievous and irremediable” mental illness to seek death at the hands of a physician. This was astounding given Kayla is a young mother in her thirties and has a 9 year old son to raise.

I followed up and can confirm The Wellness Company will be supplying Kayla with The Ultimate Spike Detox trio of products that is featured in McCullough Protocol Base Spike Detoxification.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/moderna-mrna-induced-longitudinally-extensive-transverse-myelitis-bd5d2c07

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Four Years Later

Has the dust settled?

Far from it. It is everywhere. We are choking on it. The storm cloud comes in many forms: inflation, learning losses, ill-health, high crime, non-functioning government services, broken supply chains, shoddy work, displaced workers, substance abuse, mass loneliness, discredited authority, a growing real estate crisis, censored technology and overweening state power.

For that matter, consider that Easter, the day to celebrate the Son of God’s triumph of life over death, itself was cancelled for public worship just four years ago. That actually happened. Not even at the height of World War II was there a consideration of such a thing, or even cancelling baseball. When the idea was suggested in a famous movie script, Spencer Tracy asked “Why would you abolish the thing you are trying to preserve?” (Woman of the Year 1942).

Good question. What precisely was the point of the hell we went through? Who did it and why? Why did it last so long? Why has there been no official accounting?

The lack of any real accountability or even so much as an apology is a foreshadowing: they will keep their newfound powers and try it all again.

Meanwhile, the world is on fire with war, mass killings, crime, hunger and revolution.

All of this traces to lockdowns that began March 2020, the subject about which no one in polite society speaks. It was a painful period, to be sure. The people who did this to us are hoping that we are too traumatised to pursue accountability, much less justice. To the extent we feel that way, we are playing right into their hands.

Even now, there are hundreds and even thousands of questions.

Why were there no widespread seroprevalence tests of the population before locking down? This would have been a great way to measure the level of pre-existing exposure and assess whether Deborah Birx’s stated objective to bring about Zero Covid had any chance of success.

Where did the World Health Organisation get the completely bogus 3.4% infection fatality rate number and why did it push it out?

For that matter, why did the lockdown architects not bother with the vast literature already extant, accepted as definitive in the public-health world, that lockdowns achieve only destruction and there was no form of physical intervention that had any hope of stopping a virus destined to spread to the whole population?

These were known about at the time, as were the broad outlines of the impact of this virus. So let there be no more talk about how little we knew at the time. We knew.

We still don’t know:

how they talked Trump into reversing his anti-lockdown stance on or around March 10th 2020;

to what extent the sudden spread of the virus was fuelled by testing or even how accurate the tests were;

whether the sudden wave of early death was panic-based or iatrogenic or actually the virus;

how it is that previously obscure agencies gained the power to manage the U.S. workforce and censor media;

who precisely gave the order to lock down U.S. hospital care and why;

how it came to be that the Government tried to drive conventional antivirals out of the marketplace;

who had pre-written the thousand-page bills that authorised $2 trillion in spending that broke the budget and unleashed an experiment of universal basic income.

Strangely, much of this can be explained by the crazed ambition to preserve population-wide immunological naïveté while waiting for the vaccine to arrive in mid-November, eight months later. Was that always the idea, in which case the “15 Days to Flatten Curve” was known to be complete gibberish? If that is actually true, the arrogance and sadism of the policy goal here boggles the mind.

And if that is true, why? Was it to deploy a new platform technology called mRNA that otherwise would obtain no chance for a generalised trial through normal paths? Is that the reason that Anthony Fauci went after the J&J vaccine early on, as a tactic to drive it out of the market and prepare a clean slate for Pfizer and Moderna?

If that was the goal, was it ever stated in private and by whom? Who knew the goal from the beginning?

That anyone among the ruling class could even consider conscripting the whole population into such a biological experiment gives rise to wartime ghouls of a past we thought we had left behind.

These questions only scratch the surface. Even after four years of researching this topic as part of a very large team that has scoured through a million pages of documentation and stories, having written two books and many thousands of articles, and being fuelled by a burning desire to know, most of us still have no clear answer to the profound question: why and how did this happen to us?

There are many theories, all with plausibility but none with the capacity to explain the whole.

We might say that pharma was behind the whole thing. That seems credible. The goal of testing mRNA on the global population explains a lot, especially given the trumped-up emergency situation. But the very notion that hundreds of governments around the world became surreptitiously captured stretches plausibility.

We might observe that digital tech manipulated policy to give itself a boost. The first big and viral article on the whole lockdown idea was by Thomas “Hammer-and-Dance” Pueyo, a CEO of an online learning hub that became a huge winner. Streaming platforms benefited and so did Amazon as a grocery and goods source, as did Uber Eats and DoorDash and others such as Zoom.

But are we really supposed to believe that human liberties the world over were wrecked to boost profits of this one industry? Again, that’s a stretch. And the same could be said of the theory that media was the driving force. Yes, they won big time, deploying censorship as an industrial tactic against new media startups. But how in the world would they have gained so much power the world over?

Then there is the view that the whole monstrous scheme was concocted to drive Trump out of office by creating chaos and greenlighting mail-in ballots that are difficult if not impossible to check for validity. That seems to check many empirical boxes. No question that there was some major effort to confuse the public as if the presence of the virus was a metaphor for the Trump administration itself that needed to be strangled.

There is surely truth here but how does that account for the hundreds of other governments around the world following the same path? That the response was not just national but global raises real questions.

In that context we might draw attention to the role of the CCP, which first deployed lockdowns amidst theatrically produced videos of people dying in the streets and then leaning on its power over the World Health Organisation to recommend lockdowns to the whole planet.

There’s truth in that theory too.

In the deeper realms, we are wise to visit the depths of the RFK Jr. book The Wuhan Cover-Up, which explains the history of the U.S. bioweapons programme dating back to the end of World War II. There are secret labs all over the world supported by the U.S., including in Wuhan. Their activities and funding are covered by classified restrictions from public access.

The purpose of gain-of-function research is said to be not to discover solutions to emerging new pathogens but to create new pathogens with antidotes that we have and the enemy does not have.

Was the release of this one pathogen part of this programme? If so, that would explain why the intelligence and security bureaucracies became involved very deeply early on and also explain why so many FOIA requests about every aspect of this come back heavily redacted and why we are having such a hard time getting information in general.

Any time a policy matter touches the realm of national security and intelligence, it is covered by an impenetrable veil of secrecy that no law or court seems to be able to control. This site has often explored this path of inquiry too with a great deal of evidence supporting it. In this case, we are really talking about a next-level theory, that of a digital-age coup by Deep State masters against civilian society and democracy itself.

You can probably generate another 10 or more compelling theories about the whole episode. Connecting the dots is a full-time job.

A wise man mentioned to me yesterday the astounding fact that we still do not have a full explanation of why and how the Great War came to be. That war ended old-world civilisation as we knew it. In some ways, now looking back, it was the beginning of the end of what we might call high civilisation and the prospects for peace. It unleashed the Bolshevik Revolution, caused Western-style freedoms to be mitigated by administrative state actors, introduced the idea of total war, recruited whole populations to become soldiers and otherwise shredded near-global expectations for ever rising prosperity and peace.

And yet, we still don’t know fully why or how it happened. Error piled on error and malice on malice. Once that kind of sadistic chaos tempts a ruling class, many other institutions sign up to join the party of pillage and plunder and society finds itself picked apart by interest groups that care nothing for the good of all, much less human rights.

That’s a pretty solid description of what happened to us four years ago. They broke the world.

[The Great War was certainly a great horror and a great turning point. It seems crazy in retrospect. I have argued, however, that it was a rational response to the circumstances of its time:

http://jonjayray.com/short/ww1.html

JR]

We may never get the truth but we can get closer to the truth. There will be no stopping the efforts.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/25/four-years-later/

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Lockdowns could cause more harm than Covid-19 and there was no evidence that wearing masks was useful

Germany's top public health agency knew that Covid lockdowns could be more damaging than the virus itself as early as December 2020 and said mask mandates were not backed by evidence, it has been revealed.

Newly published documents from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) show its researchers explicitly warned that their analysis showed lockdowns in Africa showed 'an expected rise in child mortality'.

'The consequences of the lockdowns are in parts more severe than the virus itself,' the December 2020 report said, with another document dated to October 2020 suggesting that there was 'no evidence' to support that FFP2 medical masks could prevent the spread of Covid.

But the findings were never made public, despite researchers clearly advocating for the open communication of their research in meeting minutes, with the German government choosing to pursue legislation their own researchers advised against.

The revelations come after a two-year legal battle between the RKI and German magazine Multipolar, which ultimately won the court case to publish documents that were heavily redacted by the health agency.

Multipolar has since launched another legal claim in an attempt to secure full access to the unredacted documents, which may conceal a trove of Covid policy recommendations that the RKI and the German government opted not to share with the public.

The saga now threatens to trigger a fallout in the German government, with Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki telling German media: 'The protocols of the RKI crisis team, some of which have now been released, raise considerable doubts as to whether the political measures to deal with the corona pandemic were really taken on a scientific basis.'

Kubicki told German outlet Bild that 'the top of the RKI, of all people, followed the political guidelines of the respective federal government and thus provided the necessary scientific facade for Corona policy.'

Seven in ten scientists say ministers failed to consider the long-term damage of lockdowns during the Covid pandemic

He also called on Germany's Federal Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach, to 'present all protocols to the public without redactions in order to create complete transparency about the internal discussions and the basis for decisions.

'If Karl Lauterbach does not follow my request, as a parliamentarian I will work to persuade him to make this disclosure so that the clarification can finally be satisfied.'

Meanwhile, the former leader of Germany's Christian Democratic Union party Armin Laschet has declared the RKI must go public with its findings.

Speaking with German broadcaster ZDF, the parliamentarian said: 'We have to disclose everything.

'You can see how differentiated the discussions were at the RKI back then and how little of this diversity of opinion ultimately found its way into concrete policy,' he continued, recalling how debates over Covid policy became 'moralised'.

'Either you are for one measure or you are a Corona denier. But there was a lot in between,' he concluded.

Meanwhile, a minute from an RKI meeting in January 2021 expressed concerns with the viability of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, with researchers warning its use 'should be discussed' because the jab was 'not as perfect'.

That same jab - that was offered to millions in the UK - was later discontinued and not offered as a booster after reports surfaced of people developing blood clots in combination with low platelet levels.

The shocking revelations come as public health experts in the UK slammed the government's Covid inquiry for 'bias', claiming it has failed to investigate the harmful impact of lockdown on British society.

More than 50 scholars and academics from some of the UK's top universities wrote to inquiry chairman Baroness Heather Hallett earlier this month urging her to 'address its apparent biases, assumptions and impartiality'.

They accuse the inquiry of 'not living up to its mission to evaluate the mistakes made during the pandemic', including whether measures such as lockdowns and restrictions on mass gatherings were 'appropriate'.

Letter co-author Dr Kevin Bardosh, director of think-tank Collateral Global, accused the inquiry of handing 'softball' questions to architects of government policy, while 'grilling' witnesses who were opposed to mass restrictions on public freedoms.

He told the Mail: 'The inquiry is not seriously questioning their (scientific advisers') assessments around the justification for their policies.

'The inquiry is not interested in whether these policy decisions were good for the country, and that seems a mistake.'

The terms of reference setting out the scope of the inquiry were established by the Government following public pressure for an inquiry.

But Dr Bardosh accused Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, of being more 'obsessed with reading out swear words in private WhatsApp messages than getting to the substance' of decision-making.

He said: 'He seems to be concerned a lot with political theatre and having these 'gotcha' moments.'

Cancer specialist Professor Karol Sikora, who signed the letter, described the inquiry as 'completely useless'.

He added: 'It is structured to assess blame and not the scientific basis of the decision making. That's the difference between lawyers and scientists.

'The decisions made during the pandemic were clearly wrong - 'how' wrong has to be a scientific assessment.

'The current framework for the current inquiry is a legal one - totally unsuited to addressing the key questions.

'We're not interested in WhatsApp gossip. We have to learn from the past - it's not about the apportioning of blame but simply how to do better next time.'

The inquiry began hearing evidence in June last year, with testimony from the likes of prime minister Rishi Sunak, Covid-era premier Boris Johnson, and ex-health secretary Matt Hancock, as well as a host of the most senior scientific and medical advisers to the Government.

The bill for the inquiry has already topped £78 million up to the end of last year, according to its latest financial report.

In its letter, the group said: 'The inquiry originated in legal petitions brought by bereaved family groups. Yet there has been little opportunity for petitions to be brought by those who have suffered from the negative effects of pandemic policy decisions.

'This is preventing a more holistic assessment of impacts on population health and wellbeing. This lack of neutrality appears to have led to biassed reasoning and predetermined conclusions, for example, to lockdown faster next time.'

It said the inquiry, which is due to run until 2026, has 'adopted a legal format that prevents a systematic evaluation of the evidence by biomedical and social scientists on the harms of restrictions to the British public' and is instead 'focused on who did or said what, rather than asking fundamental scientific questions'.

It said the probe 'appears unsuited to the task' of investigating 'the interplay between harms, benefits and best practice' in order to prepare for the next pandemic.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13239595/Lockdowns-cause-harm-Covid-19-no-evidence-wearing-masks-useful-German-health-body-admitted-coronavirus-pandemic-released-documents-show.html

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"COVID Revisited" Conference to Shed Light on Australia's Pandemic Response

Almost four years since the pandemic began, COVID-19 continues to leave its mark on Australia, affecting healthcare and society in general. While the vaccines offered some degree of protection, controversies remain around the pandemic response. These include a case brought against pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna and calls seeking transparency from the Australian government about its pandemic measures. TrialSite has reported before on Australian analysts challenging the pandemic narrative driven by the government.

To discuss the lessons learned and examine past challenges, the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society (AMPS) is organizing a conference named “COVID Revisited: Lessons Learned, Challenges Faced, and the Road Ahead.” The event aims to provide a platform from which to discuss the government’s decisions during the pandemic and policies to guide future responses.

As time passes, the controversies surrounding the lockdown measures and vaccine mandates in Australia seem to intensify. TrialSite previously reported on a legal case filed against Pfizer and Moderna in the Federal Court of Australia accusing them of lacking transparency regarding alleged DNA contaminants and GMOs in their vaccines. This case was filed by Dr. Julian Fidge and handled by lawyer Katie Ashby-Koppens and former barrister Julian Gillespie.

Providing an update in a February 2024 Substack article, Gillespie explained that the presiding judge, Hon Helen Mary Joan Rofe, had at the time delayed a final decision on the defendant's application for a case dismissal. However, on March 1, 2024, Rofe dismissed Fidge’s lawsuit against Pfizer and Moderna. For the time being, this ruling has put a halt to any likely legal challenges gaining traction against the mRNA vaccines.

We also reported in February 2024 that Australians were demanding a COVID-19 Royal Commission to investigate the vaccine mandates and pandemic measures implemented in the country. Ashby-Koppens was among those calling for this Royal Commission. According to Gillespie, the Senate Terms of Reference Committee is currently deliberating this.

Despite Rofe’s ruling, the critics are not backing down. With the AMPS’s conference looking to help people learn and discuss better ways to handle future pandemics through the “COVID Revisited” program and the ongoing process at the Senate Terms of Reference committee, the critics believe that the upcoming conference “reflects the Australian people's wish for a review of the government response to COVID-19.”

The “COVID Revisited” conference

The conference is scheduled for April 2, 2024, and will take place in the State Library NSW Auditorium. According to AMPS, top medical and academic professionals from around the world will be in attendance, with the event garnering support from notable organizations like the National Institute of Integrative Medicine (NIIM), Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM), World of Wellness International (WOW) and Children’s Health Defense Australia Chapter (CHD).

Speaking about the conference’s mission, AMPS secretary Kara Thomas stated, "Our mission is clear. We aim to generate tangible policy recommendations that substantially influence the management of future pandemic crisis situations."

Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy, one of the speakers, provided insights into the event’s structure and its focus on examining the government's handling of the COVID-19 response. “This symposium is structured to reflect the collective views of those involved in this response,” Clancy said, “with a particular focus on lessons learned as to mistakes made and how best to go forward with the best plan to handle health challenges of similar ill when next encountered.”

He further stated, “Presentations from professionals covering these disciplines will be followed by an interactive workshop with an expert panel charged with identifying outcomes. The day will conclude with a reception allowing informal discussion amongst participants and attendees. A book including presentations and outcomes will be published.”

According to AMPS, the conference will produce a set of well-defined resolutions, to be shared widely with practitioners, public health authorities and government bodies. These resolutions will identify practical measures to ensure safe and effective responses. In doing so, they aim to reduce mishandling in crisis management that could potentially compromise Australians’ health.

Progress achieved and challenges faced during the pandemic

The Australian government’s pandemic measures yielded a mixed set of outcomes. The Financial Times reported that while Australia’s initial zero-COVID strategy showed positive results in containing the virus, some critics argued that it was too strict with potential adverse economic implications.

The government’s actions included closing international borders to non-residents and, at times, restricting internal state border crossings. Widespread testing and contact tracing enabled authorities to suppress community transmission and by June 2021, Australia had recorded low COVID-19 case numbers compared to other countries.

However, these actions by the government had some negative impact on businesses and families, as business owners complained that the lockdown lingered for too long. According to a Lancet study, the Australian government was accused of discriminatory travel restrictions against specific countries, leaving many Australians stranded abroad for long periods. Moreover, as new variants emerged, maintaining zero-COVID became increasingly difficult. The Australian authorities then shifted their focus to pushing vaccination campaigns and moved from their zero-COVID policy in September 2021.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/covid-revisited-conference-to-shed-light-on-australias-pandemic-response-36b828bf

Monday, March 25, 2024

The Harm of College Vaccine Mandates

Who would have believed we’d still be talking about Covid vaccine mandates in 2024, but given how resistant authority figures are to accepting reality, or defeat or acknowledging mistakes, it seems likely we’ll unfortunately be subjected to talking about them forever.

Dozens of colleges are continuing to enforce vaccine and booster mandates on students, refusing to accept, in the face of all available evidence and data, that there is no external health benefit whatsoever to forcing 18-year-olds to get injected with a vaccine with minimal, transient benefits but with potentially harmful side-effects.

This is made even more frustrating by the fact that the former director of the FDA recently admitted that the Covid vaccine approvals process, which gave colleges and universities licence to unnecessarily force mandates onto young people, was catastrophically and fatally flawed.

Now a few researchers have turned their efforts towards attaching specific, conclusive data to expose just how damaging and harmful these mandates have been for young college students.

And it’s not good news.

Covid Booster Mandates Were Completely Unnecessary

The results from this study in the Journal of Medical Ethics are jaw-dropping, both for the harms caused by booster mandates and how utterly meaningless those mandates are to preventing any negative outcomes from Covid.

As the authors explain, thousands if not millions of college students risked having their lives and educations upended if they refused to comply with Covid booster mandates. One would imagine that to risk the possible futures of their students, colleges and universities must have required clear-cut evidence that such mandates were necessary, effective and justifiable given the epidemiological circumstances.

That evidence did not exist.

The underlying assumption of booster mandates is that a mass wave of hospitalisations and serious Covid-caused health issues would occur if students weren’t forced to stay ‘up to date’ with their vaccinations. Another assumption was that immunity from previous infection was effectively nonexistent.

As this study clearly shows, both assumptions were wildly, unimaginably wrong.

Based on an examination of booster efficacy, specifically among the 18-29 age group that makes up the overwhelming majority of college and university students, the authors estimated that 22,000-30,000 young adults must be boosted to prevent one COVID-19 associated hospitalisation.

And even that’s an overstatement. It’s 22,000-30,000 uninfected adults.

We estimate that 22,000-30,000 previously uninfected adults aged 18-29 must be boosted with an mRNA vaccine to prevent one [COVID]-19 hospitalisation.

Given the prevalence of infection-acquired immunity, especially among young people, by the time booster mandates came into effect in late 2021 and early 2022, it’s likely that schools with large enrollments in the 20,000-25,000 range may not have prevented a single Covid hospitalisation with booster mandates.

Not one.

Assuming 70% of students had already contracted Covid by 2022 – an easily achievable number considering seroprevalence estimates at that time – a school with 20,000 students would also have had 14,000 with natural immunity. Meaning that at the higher end of the study’s estimates, you’d have to look through five major universities with booster mandates before finding a single avoided Covid hospitalisation.

This potentially life-changing policy, affecting millions of students and their futures, was almost entirely meaningless. And that’s only telling half the story.

‘Net Expected Harm’

Beyond the clear uselessness in terms of reducing hospitalisations, the researchers also found that there was likely a “net expected harm” from mandates thanks to the often-ignored vaccine side-effects.

Using CDC and sponsor-reported adverse event data, we find that booster mandates may cause a net expected harm: per [COVID]-19 hospitalisation prevented in previously uninfected young adults, we anticipate 18 to 98 serious adverse events, including 1.7 to 3.0 booster-associated myocarditis cases in males, and 1,373 to 3,234 cases of grade 3 or higher reactogenicity which interferes with daily activities.

Effectively, for every 22,000-30,000 students subjected to booster mandates, there could be as many as nearly 100 serious adverse events. And one prevented hospitalisation.

Not to mention quite literally thousands of side-effects that could interfere with “daily activities”.

So in order to possibly prevent one hospitalisation among tens of thousands of students, colleges and universities essentially subjected young adults, especially men, to a risk of serious adverse effects that was 18 times to 98 times higher.

A graphic from the study indicates how significant the gap between benefits and harms is in practice.

If you’re wondering how that makes any sense, I can assure you that it doesn’t. And again, these risk-benefit ratios fail to factor in the prevalence of natural immunity among young people. As the researchers point out, this obvious but purposefully ignored reality makes this policy even more inexcusable.

“Given the high prevalence of post-infection immunity, this risk-benefit profile is even less favourable,” the authors write. That makes the entire policy “unethical”, meaning that those impacted by it are more likely to be harmed by the intervention than helped.

University booster mandates are unethical because: 1) no formal risk-benefit assessment exists for this age group; 2) vaccine mandates may result in a net expected harm to individual young people; 3) mandates are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given the modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission; 4) U.S. mandates violate the reciprocity principle because rare serious vaccine-related harms will not be reliably compensated due to gaps in current vaccine injury schemes; and 5) mandates create wider social harms.

Quite literally, there is a “net expected harm” for individual young people that were coerced into getting boosted rather than see their educational careers destroyed or futures derailed.

The very “experts” and administrators who admonished critics with endless appeals to authority, claiming that they were “following the science” while detractors were “anti-science” extremists, likely caused a net harm to thousands, if not millions of their students.

Booster mandates were unnecessary, unethical and harmful, with vanishingly small benefits and massive increases in risk. Many schools have quietly dropped their policies and mandates without acknowledging the harm they caused. But that doesn’t make it any less real, or any less inexcusable.

The actual science said they were wrong. Yet as has been so often the case during Covid policy debates, the actual science took a back seat to panic, fear, malicious coercion and inexcusable ignorance.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/23/the-harm-of-college-vaccine-mandates/

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Vaccine mandates for NSW health workers to be dropped

NSW health workers will no longer need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 under a plan to phase out vaccine mandates.

Health workers in NSW will no longer be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as the state government moves to ditch mandates for the sector.

Health Minister Ryan Park confirmed the change would be going ahead after consulting with the state's health workforce.

'We know that COVID is still around but we've got to get back on with life,' he told Sydney radio 2GB.

'That means having a look at the measures we put in place during this period and seeing whether they still apply.

'We think this is one that we can engage with the workforce on and have a look to see if it's still applicable now.'

Public health orders mandating vaccines for health professionals were brought in during the pandemic and workers who refused either quit or were sacked.

While the order expired in November 2022, some workplaces have still been able to require mandatory vaccination under their own work, health and safety obligations.

Mr Park said if a decision was made to drop the mandates, workers who lost their jobs would be able to reapply to available positions through the usual recruitment processes.

He said COVID was still a public health threat and encouraged people to keep up with their vaccinations.

'But we've also got to make sure that we get on with running a health system after COVID and we can't continue in the same way that we did in the middle of the pandemic,' he said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13233833/Vaccine-mandates-NSW-health-workers-dropped.html

Sunday, March 24, 2024

More Gobbledegook about masks

Smile Free has often highlighted the utter nonsense espoused by the U.K. Government’s public health experts and plethora of advisers on the issue of community masking. Who can forget the flip-flops of Dr. Jenny Harries and Professors Whitty and Van-Tam in June 2020, transitioning from urging healthy people not to wear face coverings into strident pro-mask advocates? Or the absurd claim of Professor Trish Greenhalgh that science is the “enemy of good policy“? But, not to be outdone, the Scottish leg of the U.K. COVID-19 Inquiry has confirmed that the gobbledegook around masks was not confined to England but also infected the ‘experts’ operating north of the border.

After the extended ramblings of Nicola Sturgeon – trying, in vain, to justify the convenient deletion of all her Covid-related WhatsApp messages – we were treated to the appearances of Professor Jason Leitch (National Clinical Director), Humza Yousaf (Scotland’s First Minister), Colin Poolman (Royal College of Nursing Scotland Director) and Devi Sridhar (Professor of Global Public Health). Chunks of their testimonies constitute a mix of ignorance, a detachment from reality and Monty Pythonesque comedy.

Did anyone understand the mask rules?

Clearly, Humza Yousaf (the then Scottish Health Secretary, no less) didn’t. During Leitch’s appearance at the inquiry it was revealed that, in November 2021, Yousaf asked Leitch whether he needed to wear a mask when stood talking at a social event. Leitch responded:

Officially yes. But literally no one does. Have a drink in your hands at all times. Then you’re exempt. So if someone comes over and you stand, lift your drink… That’s fun. You’ll go down a treat.

When challenged by the Lead Counsel as to whether this was an example of a “work-around” to “get out of complying with the rules”, Leitch’s denial was less than concise:

There was an ambiguity here that I faced as well, as we re-opened in this period, of the country, and that ambiguity was that we were allowing social occasions… And there was an ambiguity around mask-wearing when you were seated, eating, drinking, because these events are – often involve a dinner. And there was some difficulty with the interpretation of mask-wearing inside those rooms when you were eating, drinking or moving around… but there were occasions, particularly when the country was opening up again, where there was of course nuance around the guidance and the rules, and this I think was one of those occasions: when you were at a dinner, eating and drinking, and somebody approached you… I think this was a tricky area that I found tricky as well.

Well, that clears things up!

And – as observed by the KC during his questioning of Yousaf – “When you, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, feel the need to clarify the rules about face masks, what chance do others have in understanding the rules?” When this absurdity was put to Leitch, the Clinical Director’s response was, inadvertently, illustrative of the mask nonsense:

I understood the rules and I understood what we were trying to do, but the reality of life and the environment in which we were trying to do these things perhaps suggests this guidance was nuanced rather than entirely right.

If only our leaders had paid a smidgeon more attention to the “reality of life” we wouldn’t all have had to endure the imposition of masks (or, indeed, many of the other counterproductive Covid restrictions).

If only the masks had been a tad smaller

Colin Poolman, representing the Scottish RCN, lamented that the face masks provided were often too large for the NHS workforce. “Nursing is a predominantly female profession and many of the masks were not designed in smaller sizes so we had huge issues at times,” he told the inquiry, implying that a better-fitting strip of plastic would have provided an effective shield against the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. Given that the use of surgical masks to block respiratory viruses is akin to using a tennis net to hold back grains of sand, it’s hard to see how a bit less of a gap around the edges would have made any significant difference to the level of protection afforded.

Neglect of inconvenient evidence

The wealth of pesky evidence demonstrating that face coverings constitute an ineffectual viral barrier has always been a problematic truth to the pro-mask brigade: their guiding rule seems to be, “If the science doesn’t support our ideological preferences, dismiss it.” In Scotland, the doppelganger to England’s Trish Greenhalgh, appears to be Professor Devi Sridhar.

Sridhar is saturated with globalist credentials. She is Professor of Global Public Health at Edinburgh University and has worked closely with the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, the Wellcome Trust and the World Bank. During her testimony at the COVID-19 Inquiry, Sridhar demonstrated a conveniently flexible attitude to empirical research. For instance, while bemoaning that “we spent too long debating whether masks work”, Sridar asserts that “in clinical settings they work, surgeons use them, on construction sites, the mask itself works”. This esteemed academic seems blissfully unaware that surgeons primarily don face coverings to avoid potential exchange of bodily fluids (such as saliva and blood) rather than to reduce the transmission of viruses. And as for construction sites, keeping dust and fragments of concrete and masonry at bay is a somewhat different challenge to avoiding inhalation of microscopic pathogens.

Like many of her pro-mask public health colleagues, Sridhar appears to struggle to grasp what happens in the real world. Thus, she rightly acknowledges that “masks at a population level are often not used correctly, people wear them over their mouth not their nose, they take them off to eat and drink”, but then asserts that “if it is used appropriately it is probably one of the best interventions you can use to protect yourself”. So, apparently, in Sridhar’s surreal ecosphere, if people wore masks perfectly all of the time, never tugged and fiddled with them and – uh – stopped eating and drinking, they would provide some benefit. If only we all lived in a parallel universe.

Sridhar clearly has an emotional attachment to mass masking in the community, perhaps because it chimes with her ideological beliefs about collectivism, the sense that we’re all in it together and must behave in socially responsible ways. Empirical evidence be damned if it does not support one’s political proclivities. This phenomenon is illustrated in Sridhar’s inquiry interview; when the KC states that the science had concluded that public use of face coverings achieved a “near non-existent” degree of benefit, and then asks her, “Is this the sort of debate and discussion that you think we should have bypassed?” Sridhar replies, “Exactly”. It is reasonable to propose that double standards are on display here; if robust studies had found in favour of masks, Sridhar and her ilk would have been screaming it from the Davos rooftops.

Ignorance around mask harms

Throughout the Covid event, there has been one common factor inherent to all the narratives beseeching us to cover our faces with strips of cloth and plastic: a failure to acknowledge the wide-ranging harms of masking healthy people. This omission – due either to ignorance or wilful avoidance – is evident once again in Sridhar’s Covid Inquiry testimony. For instance, in her attempt to defend her partisan championing of community masking, she asserts that “the cost is slight… so, for me, recommending masks seems a low-cost measure of something easy, like hand-washing, you can tell people to do”.

I sometimes imagine engaging in a prolonged attempt to impress upon Sridhar (or, for that matter, any other pro-mask zealot) the raft of negative consequences (physical, social and psychological) associated with routine masking. And, in this thought experiment, I then envision asking her the question, “What possible harms could there be from masking children and adults in healthcare, education and other community settings?” I suspect her response might be something like:

There are no appreciable harms to masking [awkward silence]. Okay, well apart from dermatitis, headaches, perpetuating fear, stunting infants’ cognitive and emotional development; excluding the hard-of-hearing, evoking fatigue, reducing lung efficiency, tormenting the autistic, increasing falls in the elderly, re-traumatising the historically traumatised, the inhalation of micro fibres, concentration impairment, reducing the quality of healthcare, discouraging patients from attending hospital, impeding school learning, the aggravation of existing anxiety problems, encouraging harassment of the mask exempt, enabling criminals to escape conviction, and polluting our towns and waterways .. [deep breath] what possible harms could there be?

I’m sure the Monty Python team would have approved.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/22/devi-sridhars-mask-gobbledegook-on-full-display-at-the-covid-inquiry/

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Senate votes against vaccine-injured Australians

I am a vaccine-injured Australian, writing under a false name to protect my identity. The reason I do this is because I don’t want my claim to be affected. No one in power wants to believe me, they just want me to curl up and disappear. I am an inconvenience that threatens the narrative. But there are tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of Australians like me, and we are not going to go gently into the night.

Today, I watched as Gerard Rennick, an LNP Senator for Queensland, moved for an inquiry into the federal COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Claims Scheme. Senator Rennick is one of the only voices that stands up for us. He stands up for us loudly. But his calls for an inquiry were shot down by his colleagues.

According to the parliamentary Hansard, Senator Rennick specifically wanted an inquiry into the scheme’s eligibility criteria, the time in processing claimants’ applications, the differences between the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s assessments and specialists’ assessments reported in vaccine injury claims, the adequacy of the scheme’s compensation of claimant’s injuries, mental health and lost earnings, the risks that inadequate support and compensation for vaccine-related injuries might exacerbate vaccine hesitancy, and other related matters.

In speaking to his motion, Senator Rennick told his colleagues how, in Australia, the government has done a woeful job of acknowledging and compensating those people who it has injured through drugs that it has prescribed. He talked about the victims of thalidomide, and how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s apology came 60 years too late. He talked about how Australians had suffered in the 1980s when the Red Cross and CSL Limited allegedly infected tens of thousands with AIDS and Hepatitis C. He talked about mesh injuries, and how his uncle had been left blind after taking a sulfa drug. He talked about how the pharmaceutical industry has a history of putting their wallets in front of people’s health. He said that Australians ‘were told the vaccine was safe and effective.’ He asked, ‘If we [politicians] aren’t here to protect the people, what exactly are we here for?’ He said that Australians ‘should not be made to suffer for following the advice of the government that said they would be protected’.

Later in the debate, another senator said that no one else had spent more time talking to vaccine-injured Australians than Senator Rennick. ‘He speaks with a good heart and from a place of deep conviction.’ And that’s right. Senator Rennick does. He talked about and said all the right things. He gave me and all those other vaccine-injured Australians a voice. He was fighting for us, and he was winning.

Then the Albanese government’s chief spokesperson in the chamber, Katy Gallagher, stood up.

Senator Gallagher used her speaking time to gaslight Senator Rennick, describing his views as ‘irresponsible’. She said that the government would consider the recommendations made to the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, which advocates for a national no-fault vaccine injury compensation scheme. ‘There is no need for another inquiry,’ she finished.

Except that’s exactly what the recommendations made to the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee demand: a review of the COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Claims Scheme. How can you conduct a review if you can’t have another inquiry? How, Senator Gallagher, how? She said that the government had only received the report earlier this week, and implied that decisions were being rushed. No, Senator Rennick was just getting on with the job, fighting the good fight. Fighting for us.

When Rennick’s motion went to a vote, a division was required. The bells were rung. Coalition senators rocked up to support their colleague, as did Malcolm Roberts from One Nation, but it wasn’t enough. The Labor government, the Greens, Jacquie Lambie’s mob, and Lidia Thorpe all voted against the motion. It was defeated 24 votes to 31.

This is what the government thinks of us. We are the problem that, in their collective mind, deserves no solution. Australians are dying because they were forced to take an experimental drug and were told that if they didn’t, they would lose their jobs, their livelihood. They were ridiculed and shamed into submission. At least the Coalition seems to have the courage to admit it got it wrong, and under Senator Rennick wants to try and repair the damage as best it can. Why, now, is the Labor Government so frightened of uncovering the truth?

And I cannot believe that Senator Rennick won’t be on the LNP’s ticket at the next federal election. One of the last blokes with any real guts in Canberra, prepared to stand up to the powerful, has been, like we have, shoved aside.

This is a dark day for Australia, but it’s just another day in the last four years for me, for all those Australians injured by the Covid vaccines.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/03/senate-votes-against-vaccine-injured-australians/

Thursday, March 21, 2024

New Canadian vaccine works

As SARS-CoV2 evolves into more distant Omicron variants, companies continue to invest in research and development and potentially vie for lucrative government contracts for future COVID-19 vaccine deals. In this context, the Canada based Providence Therapeutics mRNA platform appears to support the acceleration of next-generation COVID-19 vaccine candidates.

Researchers affiliated the clinical-stage mRNA platform company developing vaccines for cancers and infectious disease, report on a study comparing their investigational mRNA vaccine with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 (Comirnaty). When considering this approach to mRNA vaccine development the company touts its “dynamic and adaptable responses, emphasizing the importance of sustained vaccination strategies.”

How did the Canadian company’s experimental vaccine targeting COVID-19 compare against Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 in a Phase 2 clinical trial?

With results of this study (NCT05175742) published in Nature Scientific Reports, the study team based out of Canada reports on the results of the head on comparison study leveraging trial sites in Canada and South Africa.

The Study

In this investigation, the sponsor-funded study looks at their COVID-19 vaccine called PTX-COVID19-B mRNA Humoral Vaccine, developed to prevent COVID-19 in a general population. Importantly, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine does not stop viral transmission but reduces the probability of morbidity and mortality.

For comparison of the vaccines, the study’s protocol was designed to produce the data to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of PTX-COVID19-B compared to Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in healthy seronegative adults aged 18 to 64.

An observer-blind, double-dummy, randomized immunobridging phase 2 study, the researchers compared the immunogenicity induced by two doses of 40 μg PTX-COVID19-B vaccine candidate administered 28 days apart, with the response induced by two doses of 30 µg Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (BNT162b2), administered 21 days apart, in Nucleocapsid-protein seronegative adults, again ranging in age from 18–64 years.

The study team reports that both vaccines were administrated via intramuscular injection in the deltoid muscle. Two weeks after the second dose, the neutralizing antibody (NAb) geometric mean titer ratio and seroconversion rate met the non-inferiority criteria, successfully achieving the primary immunogenicity endpoints of the study. PTX-COVID19-B demonstrated similar safety and tolerability profile to BNT162b2 vaccine.

Importantly, a non-inferiority trial is a study that determines if a new treatment is not worse than an active treatment it is being compared to. These trials are used when a placebo (an inactive treatment) cannot be used, or when the incremental benefits of newly developed treatments may be only marginal over existing treatments, which appears to be the case here.

While NAb with lowest response was detected in subjects with low-to-undetectable NAb at baseline or no reported breakthrough infection, the study investigators also found that the study result demonstrates induction of cell-mediated immune (CMI) responses by PTX-COVID19-B.

Cell-mediated immunity (CMI), also known as cell-mediated immune response or cell-mediated immune defense, is a crucial aspect of the immune system's defense mechanism. It involves specialized cells, primarily T lymphocytes (T cells), which directly attack and destroy infected or abnormal cell

Summary

According to the entry, the candidate PTX-COVID19-B demonstrated favorable safety profile along with immunogenicity similar to the active comparator BNT162b2 vaccine.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/canadian-mrna-develop-phase-2-head-on-evaluation-versus-pfizers-bnt162b2-meets-non-inferiority-endpoint-a726d6b1

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Now That Puberty Blockers Have Been Banned, it’s Time to Ban Covid Vaccines for Children Too

Puberty blockers have finally been banned in the U.K. The decision came after an independent review of services for children under 18 and a sharp rise in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which is closing at the end of March.

“We have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of puberty-suppressing hormones” an NHS spokesperson told the Telegraph on March 12th 2024.

MPs and media personalities have come out in support of this move. But in reality, most of them have remained silent on this issue up until now. It has previously been considered too politically sensitive and controversial to comment on, with the threat of being branded a ‘transphobe’ or ‘bigot’ no doubt playing a significant role in their collective silence. Nonetheless, I have yet to meet a single person, outside of social media, who agrees that puberty blockers are either ethical or safe. Thankfully, strong and courageous voices, such as J.K. Rowling, Allison Pearson, Molly Kingsley and Jordan Peterson have been calling out the dangers of this practice from the start. They are now clearly vindicated.

When the issue is stripped back to its essence, puberty blockers have been banned on the basis of long established medical ethics. Specifically, that children should never be given a medical intervention which they do not need and which poses known and serious risks to them – a view which before 2020 would have been the reasonable position to take. Indeed, to argue otherwise would have been regarded as extreme. The factor which changed after 2020 was the rollout of the Covid vaccines to children. Seemingly overnight, medical ethics was suspended and inverted in favour of pushing ahead with the vaccine rollout. However, if we apply the same principles behind the banning of puberty blockers to the Covid vaccines, they would also be banned for children with immediate effect.

The Covid vaccine rollout to children has always been controversial. Consider:

Covid vaccinations were not recommended by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) for under-16s, a decision overridden by the Chief Medical Officers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

When Matt Hancock was Health Secretary, he stated in Parliament that the Covid vaccines were for the adult population only. He said that children would not be offered the vaccine because it had not been tested on children and that they were at low risk from Covid. Despite this, he then supported the rollout to the nation’s children.

There are still no long-term safety data for the Covid vaccines (and at the time of the rollout to children, incomplete short-term and no medium-term safety data).
Covid vaccines pose known and very serious risks (these include potentially fatal myocarditis, pericarditis etc.) Tragically, there have also been coroner confirmed deaths caused by the Covid vaccines.

A child can still catch and spread Covid when vaccinated against the virus.

Healthy children are at extremely low risk of serious illness from Covid, so the risks posed by the vaccines outweigh any possible benefit for a child.

When Sajid Javid was Health Secretary, he stated that 12 to 15 year-old children would have the final say on whether or not to receive the Covid vaccine. Children were told that they were allowed to override their parents’ decision. This remains, in my opinion, the most egregious act of the entire pandemic.

The Government chose Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company with a long history of criminal and medical negligence (and which paid the biggest criminal fine in U.S. history) as the company to provide the Covid vaccine for our children. This really should have been a red flag from the start.

One of the most controversial points was the decision by the U.K. Government to shut down its own Ethics Committee when its members raised serious concerns about the Covid vaccine rollout to children.

Like puberty blockers, the general public appears to have been opposed to the Covid vaccine rollout to children. In the end, 89.4% of five to 11-year-olds did not receive a single Covid vaccine or booster. This is despite a multi-million pound marketing campaign directed at children and their parents. Over 50% of the 12-15 year old cohort did not receive a single dose either.

The evidence keeps stacking up against the Covid vaccines

MPs have said they believe the MHRA were aware of heart and clotting issues caused by the Covid vaccines in February 2021 but did not highlight the problems for several months. The all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on pandemic response and recovery raised “serious patient safety concerns”, claiming that “far from protecting patients” the regulator operates in a way that “puts them at serious risk”. Some 25 MPs across four parties wrote to the Health Select Committee asking for an urgent investigation.

The group also warned that the MHRA Yellow Card reporting system – which encourages patients and doctors to flag-up medicine side effects – “grossly” underestimates complexities, and in some instances picks up just one in 180 cases of harm.

MPs and peers have also accused the Health Secretary of withholding data that could link the Covid vaccine to excess deaths, and criticised a “wall of silence” on the topic. A cross-party group has written to Victoria Atkins to sound alarm about the “growing public and professional concerns” at the U.K.’s rates of excess deaths since 2020.

With the growing evidence that something is seriously amiss with the Covid vaccines, surely we should stop giving them to our children? Currently within the U.K., children who are considered vulnerable (including those with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and ADHD) and those living with clinically vulnerable adults are eligible for the vaccine. It is also possible for parents to privately purchase the Covid vaccine for their children if they are 12 years old or over. In light of the ban on puberty blockers, it makes sense to apply this thinking to the Covid vaccines too.

Things will change when members of the public speak up

Being critical of puberty blockers will become the accepted narrative now that they have been banned. Members of the public, media personalities and politicians will begin to openly express this position (which has always been the majority view). However, we need to get to a point when people begin to express opinions which they genuinely hold but are still considered controversial. Expressing lawful opinions about sensitive topics, particularly when it comes to safeguarding children against harm, should be encouraged and not vilified.

All of the safeguarding training across workplace sectors is easily dismantled and destroyed in the face of moral cowardice. As a former headteacher, with 30 years’ experience within the education sector, I had to attend annual safeguarding training which laid out what an education professional must do when he or she has concerns about a child. The training always highlighted examples in which entire organisations have been complicit in widespread abuse.

We are told that it is not just the perpetrators of the abuse who are accountable. Those who are not directly involved in the abuse, but who remain silent about it, are equally accountable under law. These individuals, woefully lacking in moral courage, place their self-preservation ahead of the needs of the children in their care. It is also a serious breach of their legal duty to safeguard children against harm.

Of course, cancel culture, as well as employers evangelised by whatever the latest thing happens to be, inhibits free speech. If an opinion goes against the current narrative, employees are likely to be attacked for expressing it. Whether that be criticism of puberty blockers, the Covid vaccines, climate alarmism, drag queen storytime or anything else. Expressing lawful opinions about controversial and politically sensitive topics will almost always result in some sort of attack. However, we must draw a line when it comes to safeguarding children against harm.

As the only U.K. headteacher to publicly express concerns about lockdowns, masking kids and the Covid vaccines for children, I have experienced multiple attacks and personal losses. This is why I am now taking my former employer, East Sussex County Council, to court. In the end, expressing my valid concerns in a lawful and moderate manner cost me my career. My employer tried to silence me through the complaints and investigation process, but I continued to express my concerns. I was fulfilling my legal and moral duty in doing so. My philosophical belief in the importance of critical thinking, freedom of speech and safeguarding children underpins my case. It is predicted to set an important legal precedent for free speech in the workplace and has gained the overwhelming support of the public, high-profile free speech advocates and the Daily Telegraph.

But it needn’t result in expensive court cases and conflict if everyone expressed their lawful opinions about the things which matter. The ban on puberty blockers is a fantastic development in the battle to protect our children, but those who were silent about it are partly responsible for the delay. This abhorrent medical intervention should have been banned long ago. The same principles applied to the ban on puberty blockers should now be applied to the Covid vaccines for children. Children do not need this medical intervention, which is ineffective and known to cause harm. The general public is clearly in agreement so the time to speak up about it is now. Silence should never be an option when safeguarding children against harm.

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/19/now-that-puberty-blockers-have-been-banned-its-time-to-ban-covid-vaccines-for-children-too/

BACKGROUND

Home (Index page)

A simple definiton: Conservatism is all about preserving traditions and resisting sudden change

Deep down: The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

Leftists use the rest of us as a tool to make themselves feel better

The extreme Right are actually the extreme Left

"Social justice" is inherently tyrannical

Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party. And now a "Deplorable"

When it comes to political incorrectness, I hit the trifecta. I talk about race, IQ and social class. I have an academic background in all three subjects but that wins me no forgiveness

Access past and present backups for all my current blogs

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

My annual picture page

Subject index to my academic journal articles

Consolidated list of links to all my writings

The sidebar entries here had become very extensive. I have therefore divided them into two. The first half is below and the second half is here -- including some comments on Jews

References to "Leftists" below are to preachers of Leftism, not the ordinary Leftist voter

As a good academic, I define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

So an essential feature of Leftism is that they think they have the right to tell other people what to do. They see things in the world that are not ideal and conclude therefore that they have the right to change those things by force. Conservative explanations of why things are not ideal -- and never can be -- fall on deaf ears

That Left and Right are so hostile to one-another is most unfortunate. Broadly, the world needs Leftists to highlight problems and conservatives to solve them. But the Left get angry with conservatives when conservatives point out that there are no good solutions to some problems

Conservatism is as much a respect for reality as a respect for tradition. But tradition summarizes a lot of reality. So conservative thinking must change as reality changes. There is no unchanging body of doctrine in conservatism. Conservatism is an attitude, a realistic attitude. Leftists, by contrast, believe whatever suits them, reality regardless

Giorgia dal Italia -- my favourite politician

What the Left routinely forgets: As Henry Hazlitt pointed out: “The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.”

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities,” -- Voltaire.

Social justice is injustice. What is just about taking money off people who have earned it and giving it to people who have not earned it? You can call it many things but justice it is not

But it is the aim of all Leftist governments to take money off people who have earned it and give it to people who have not earned it

Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice.’ - Thomas Sowell

At the most basic (psychological) level, conservatives are the contented people and Leftists are the discontented people. Conservatives don't think the world is perfect but they can happily live with it. And both those attitudes are largely dispositional, inborn -- which is why they so rarely change

Revolution is the ultimate desideratum for Leftists

Patriotism is a happy thing. No wonder Leftists have difficulties with it

Leftists' manifest desire is to destroy their country from the inside with division and hatred

The Left Doesn't Like Christmas because Christmas is just too happy for them

Former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo switched from Democrat to the Republican Party, saying, “A conservative is a liberal who was mugged the night before.”

Who is this Leftist? Take his description of his political program: A "declaration of war against the order of things which exist, against the state of things which exist, in a word, against the structure of the world which presently exists". You could hardly get a more change-oriented or revolutionary programme than that. So whose programme was it? Marx? Lenin? Stalin? Trotsky? Mao? No. It was how Hitler described his programme towards the end of "Mein Kampf". And the Left pretend that Hitler was some sort of conservative! Perhaps it not labouring the point also to ask who it was that described his movement as having a 'revolutionary creative will' which had 'no fixed aim, _ no permanency, only eternal change'. It could very easily have been Trotsky or Mao but it was in fact Hitler (O'Sullivan, 1983. p. 138). Clearly, Nazism was nothing more nor less than a racist form of Leftism (rather extreme Leftism at that) and to label it as "Rightist" or anything else is to deny reality.

A rarely acknowledged aim of Leftist policy in a democracy is to deliver dismay and disruption into the lives other people -- whom they regard as "complacent" -- and they are good at achieving that.

As usual, however, it is actually they who are complacent, with a conviction of the rightness and virtue of their own beliefs that merges into arrogance. They regard anyone who disagrees with them with contempt.

Leftists are wolves in sheep's clothing

Liberals are people who don't believe in liberty

Leftist principles are as solid as foam rubber. When they say that there is no such thing as right and wrong they really mean it.

Leftists FEAR the future

There is no dealing with the Left. Their word is no good. You cannot make a deal with someone who thinks lying and stealing are mere tactics, which the Marxists actually brag about

Montesquieu knew Leftists well: "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice."

Because they claim to have all the answers to society's ills, Communists often seem "cool" to young people

German has a word that describes most Leftists well: "Scheinheilig" - A person who appears to be very kind, soft natured, and filled with pure goodness but behind the facade, has a vile nature. He is seemingly holy but is an unscrupulous person on the inside.

The new faith is very oppressive: Leftist orthodoxy is the new dominant religion of the Western world and it is every bit as bigoted and oppressive as Christianity was at its worst

There are two varieties of authoritarian Leftism. Fascists are soft Leftists, preaching one big happy family -- "Better together" in other words. Communists are hard Leftists, preaching class war.

Equality: The nonsensical and incoherent claim that underlies so much Leftist discourse is "all men are equal". And that is the envier's gospel. It makes not a scrap of sense and shows no contact with reality but it is something that enviers resort to as a way of soothing their envious feelings. They deny the very differences that give them so much heartburn. "Denial" was long ago identified by Freud as a maladaptive psychological defence mechanism and "All men are equal" is a prize example of that. Whatever one thinks of his theories, Freud was undoubtedly an acute observer of people and very few psychologists today would doubt the maladaptive nature of denial as described by Freud.

Socialism is the most evil malady ever to afflict the human brain. The death toll in WWII alone tells you that

“Hanlon’s razor”: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

American conservatives have to struggle to hold their country together against Leftist attempts to destroy it. Maduro's Venezuela is a graphic example of how extremely destructive socialism in government can be

The standard response from Marxist apologists for Stalin and other Communist dictators is to say you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. To which Orwell retorted, ‘Where’s the omelette?’

You do still occasionally see some mention of the old idea that Leftist parties represent the worker. In the case of the U.S. Democrats that is long gone. Now they want to REFORM the worker. No wonder most working class Americans these days vote Republican. Democrats are the party of the minorities and the smug

"The tendency of liberals is to create bodies of men and women — of all classes — detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion — mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined." —T.S. Eliot

We live in a country where the people own the Government and not in a country where the Government owns the people -- Churchill

"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others" -- Cicero. See here

The Left have a lot in common with tortoises. They have a thick mental shell that protects them from the reality of the world about them

Definition of a Socialist: Someone who wants everything you have...except your job.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

One cheer for Jon Burge

Leftist writers usually seem quite reasonable and persuasive at first glance. The problem is not what they say but what they don't say. Leftist beliefs are so counterfactual ("all men are equal", "all men are brothers" etc.) that to be a Leftist you have to have a talent for blotting out from your mind facts that don't suit you. And that is what you see in Leftist writing: A very selective view of reality. Facts that disrupt a Leftist story are simply ignored. Leftist writing is cherrypicking on a grand scale

So if ever you read something written by a Leftist that sounds totally reasonable, you have an urgent need to find out what other people say on that topic. The Leftist will almost certainly have told only half the story

Leftists commonly have the Cyclops syndrome: to see with only one eye, in only one dimension and only half of reality.

We conservatives have the facts on our side, which is why Leftists never want to debate us and do their best to shut us up. It's very revealing the way they go to great lengths to suppress conservative speech at universities. Universities should be where the best and brightest Leftists are to be found but even they cannot stand the intellectual challenge that conservatism poses for them. It is clearly a great threat to them. If what we say were ridiculous or wrong, they would grab every opportunity to let us know it

A conservative does not hanker after the new; He hankers after the good. Leftists hanker after the untested

Just one thing is sufficient to tell all and sundry what an unamerican lamebrain Obama is. He pronounced an army corps as an army "corpse" Link here. Can you imagine any previous American president doing that? Many were men with significant personal experience in the armed forces in their youth.

'Gay Pride' parades: You know you live in a great country when "oppressed" people have big, colorful parades.

A favorite Leftist saying sums up the whole of Leftism: "To make an omelette, you've got to break eggs". They want to change some state of affairs and don't care who or what they destroy or damage in the process. They think their alleged good intentions are sufficient to absolve them from all blame for even the most evil deeds

In practical politics, the art of Leftism is to sound good while proposing something destructive

Leftists are the "we know best" people, meaning that they are intrinsically arrogant. Matthew chapter 6 would not be for them. And arrogance leads directly into authoritarianism

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His clever short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Inside Every Liberal is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out

Insight: "A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him." —Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Leftists think of themselves as the new nobility

Many people in literary and academic circles today who once supported Stalin and his heirs are generally held blameless and may even still be admired whereas anybody who gave the slightest hint of support for the similarly brutal Hitler regime is an utter polecat and pariah. Why? Because Hitler's enemies were "only" the Jews whereas Stalin's enemies were those the modern day Left still hates -- people who are doing well for themselves materially. Modern day Leftists understand and excuse Stalin and his supporters because Stalin's hates are their hates.

"Those who see hate everywhere think they're looking thru a window when actually they're looking at a mirror"

Hatred has long been a central pillar of leftist ideologies, premised as they are on trampling individual rights for the sake of a collectivist plan. Karl Marx boasted that he was “the greatest hater of the so-called positive.” In 1923, V.I. Lenin chillingly declared to the Soviet Commissars of Education, “We must teach our children to hate. Hatred is the basis of communism.” In his tract “Left-Wing Communism,” Lenin went so far as to assert that hatred was “the basis of every socialist and Communist movement.”

Karl Marx in his own words

If you understand that Leftism is hate, everything falls into place.

The strongest way of influencing people is to convince them that you will do them some good. Leftists and con-men misuse that

Leftists believe only what they want to believe. So presenting evidence contradicting their beliefs simply enrages them. They do not learn from it

Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves.

Leftists who think that they can conjure up paradise out of their own limited brains are simply fools -- arrogant and dangerous fools. They essentially know nothing. Conservatives learn from the thousands of years of human brains that have preceded us -- including the Bible, the ancient Greeks and much else. The death of Socrates is, for instance, an amazing prefiguration of the intolerant 21st century. Ask any conservative stranded in academe about his freedom of speech

Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Leftists don't understand that -- which is a major factor behind their simplistic thinking. They just never see the trade-offs. But implementing any Leftist idea will hit us all with the trade-offs

Chesteron's fence -- good conservative thinking

"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley"[go oft astray] is a well known line from a famous poem by the great Scottish poet, Robert Burns. But the next line is even wiser: "And leave us nought but grief and pain for promised joy". Burns was a Leftist of sorts so he knew how often their theories fail badly.

Mostly, luck happens when opportunity meets preparation.

Most Leftist claims are simply propaganda. Those who utter such claims must know that they are not telling the whole story. Hitler described his Marxist adversaries as "lying with a virtuosity that would bend iron beams". At the risk of ad hominem shrieks, I think that image is too good to remain disused.

Conservatives adapt to the world they live in. Leftists want to change the world to suit themselves

ABOUT

Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?

The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"

UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.

I imagine that few of my readers will understand it, but I am an unabashed monarchist. And, as someone who was born and bred in a monarchy and who still lives there (i.e. Australia), that gives me no conflicts at all. In theory, one's respect for the monarchy does not depend on who wears the crown but the impeccable behaviour of the present Queen does of course help perpetuate that respect.

I imagine that most Americans might find this rather mad -- but I believe that a constitutional Monarchy is the best form of government presently available. Can a libertarian be a Monarchist? I think so -- and prominent British libertarian Sean Gabb seems to think so too! Long live the Queen! (And note that Australia ranks well above the USA on the Index of Economic freedom. Heh!)

The Australian flag with the Union Jack quartered in it

Throughout Europe there is an association between monarchism and conservatism. It is a little sad that American conservatives do not have access to that satisfaction. So even though Australia is much more distant from Europe (geographically) than the USA is, Australia is in some ways more of an outpost of Europe than America is! Mind you: Australia is not very atypical of its region. Australia lies just South of Asia -- and both Japan and Thailand have greatly respected monarchies. And the demise of the Cambodian monarchy was disastrous for Cambodia

Throughout the world today, possession of a U.S. or U.K. passport is greatly valued. I once shared that view. Developments in recent years have however made me profoundly grateful that I am a 5th generation Australian. My Australian passport is a door into a much less oppressive and much less messed-up place than either the USA or Britain

Following the Sotomayor precedent, I would hope that a wise older white man such as myself with the richness of that experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who hasn’t lived that life.

"Remind me never to get this guy mad at me" -- Instapundit

It seems to be a common view that you cannot talk informatively about a country unless you have been there. I completely reject that view but it is nonetheless likely that some Leftist dimbulb will at some stage aver that any comments I make about politics and events in the USA should not be heeded because I am an Australian who has lived almost all his life in Australia. I am reluctant to pander to such ignorance in the era of the "global village" but for the sake of the argument I might mention that I have visited the USA 3 times -- spending enough time in Los Angeles and NYC to get to know a fair bit about those places at least. I did however get outside those places enough to realize that they are NOT America.

"Intellectual" = Leftist dreamer. I have more publications in the academic journals than almost all "public intellectuals" but I am never called an intellectual and nor would I want to be. Call me a scholar or an academic, however, and I will accept either as a just and earned appellation

Some personal background

My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 80 at the time of writing in 2024. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here

I completed the work for my Ph.D. at the end of 1970 but the degree was not awarded until 1974 -- due to some academic nastiness from Seymour Martin Lipset and Fred Emery. A conservative or libertarian who makes it through the academic maze has to be at least twice as good as the average conformist Leftist. Fortunately, I am a born academic.

Despite my great sympathy and respect for Christianity, I am the most complete atheist you could find. I don't even believe that the word "God" is meaningful. I am not at all original in that view, of course. Such views are particularly associated with the noted German philosopher Rudolf Carnap. Unlike Carnap, however, none of my wives have committed suicide

In my teenage years, however, I was fortunate to be immersed (literally) in a very fundamentalist Christian religion. And the heavy Bible study I did at that time left me with lessons for life that have stood me in good stead ever since

Very occasionally in my writings I make reference to the greats of analytical philosophy such as Carnap and Wittgenstein. As philosophy is a heavily Leftist discipline however, I have long awaited an attack from some philosopher accusing me of making coat-trailing references not backed by any real philosophical erudition. I suppose it is encouraging that no such attacks have eventuated but I thought that I should perhaps forestall them anyway -- by pointing out that in my younger days I did complete three full-year courses in analytical philosophy (at 3 different universities!) and that I have had papers on mainstream analytical philosophy topics published in academic journals

IQ and ideology: Most academics are Left-leaning. Why? Because very bright people who have balls go into business, while very bright people with no balls go into academe. I did both with considerable success, which makes me a considerable rarity. Although I am a born academic, I have always been good with money too. My share portfolio even survived the GFC in good shape. The academics hate it that bright people with balls make more money than them.

I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak. Some might conclude that I must therefore be a very confused sort of atheist but I can assure everyone that I do not feel the least bit confused. The New Testament is a lighthouse that has illumined the thinking of all sorts of men and women and I am deeply grateful that it has shone on me.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. Conservatism is in touch with reality. Leftism is not.

I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address

Most teenagers have sporting and movie posters on their bedroom walls. At age 14 I had a map of Taiwan on my wall.

A small personal note: I have always been very self-confident. I inherited it from my mother, along with my skeptical nature. So I don't need to feed my self-esteem by claiming that I am wiser than others -- which is what Leftists do.

As with conservatives generally, it bothers me not a bit to admit to large gaps in my knowledge and understanding. For instance, I don't know if the slight global warming of the 20th century will resume in the 21st, though I suspect not. And I don't know what a "healthy" diet is, if there is one. Constantly-changing official advice on the matter suggests that nobody knows

As well as being an academic, I am an army man and I am pleased and proud to say that I have worn my country's uniform. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.

It would be very easy for me to say that I am too much of an individual for the army but I did in fact join the army and enjoy it greatly, as most men do. In my observation, ALL army men are individuals. It is just that they accept discipline in order to be militarily efficient -- which is the whole point of the exercise. But that's too complex for simplistic Leftist thinking, of course

A real army story here

It's amusing that my army service gives me honour among conservatives but contempt from Leftists. I don't weep at all about the latter. I am still in touch with some of the fine people I served with over 50 years ago. The army is like that

This is just a bit of romanticism but I do have permanently located by the head of my bed a genuine century-old British army cavalry sword. It is still a real weapon. I was not in the cavalry but I see that sword as a symbol of many things. I want it to be beside my bed when I die

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and there is JUST ONE saying of Hitler's that I rather like. It may not even be original to him but it is found in chapter 2 of Mein Kampf (published in 1925): "Widerstaende sind nicht da, dass man vor ihnen kapituliert, sondern dass man sie bricht". The equivalent English saying is "Difficulties exist to be overcome" and that traces back at least to the 1920s -- with attributions to Montessori and others. Hitler's metaphor is however one of smashing barriers rather than of politely hopping over them and I am myself certainly more outspoken than polite. Hitler's colloquial Southern German is notoriously difficult to translate but I think I can manage a reasonable translation of that saying: "Resistance is there not for us to capitulate to but for us to break". I am quite sure that I don't have anything like that degree of determination in my own life but it seems to me to be a good attitude in general anyway

And something that was perceptive comes from the same chapter. Hitler said that the doctrines of the interwar Social Democrats (mainstream leftists) of Vienna were "comprised of egotism and hate". Not much has changed

I have used many sites to post my writings over the years and many have gone bad on me for various reasons. So if you click on a link here to my other writings you may get a "page not found" response if the link was put up some time before the present. All is not lost, however. All my writings have been reposted elsewhere. If you do strike a failed link, just take the filename (the last part of the link) and add it to the address of any of my current home pages and -- Voila! -- you should find the article concerned.

COMMENTS: I have gradually added comments facilities to all my blogs. The comments I get are interesting. They are mostly from Leftists and most consist either of abuse or mere assertions. Reasoned arguments backed up by references to supporting evidence are almost unheard of from Leftists. Needless to say, I just delete such useless comments.

You can email me here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR" -- and that preference has NOTHING to do with an American soap opera that featured a character who was referred to in that way

SIDEBAR EXTENSION HERE

DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism"
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart

BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral reef compendium.
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia

BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Vodafrauds (vodafone)
Bank of Queensland blues

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

Some more useful links

Alt archives for "Dissecting Leftism" here or here
Longer Academic Papers
Johnray links
Academic home page
Academic Backup Page
General Backup
General Backup 2
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia

Selected reading

MONOGRAPH ON LEFTISM

CONSERVATISM AS HERESY

A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF NAZISM

Rightism defined
Leftist Churches
Leftist Racism
Fascism is Leftist
Hitler a socialist
Leftism is authoritarian
James on Leftism
Irbe on Leftism
Beltt on Leftism
Lakoff
Van Hiel
Sidanius
Kruglanski
Pyszczynski et al.

Cautionary blogs about big Australian organizations:

TELSTRA
OPTUS
VODAFONE
AGL
Bank of Queensland
Queensland Police
Australian police news
QANTAS, a dying octopus

INTERESTING BLOGS by others
(My frequent reads are starred)

10 o'clock scholar
Agitator*
AMCGLTD
American Thinker
ASTUTE BLOGGERS
Baby Troll
Bad Eagle
Belmont Club*
Betsy's Page
Bill Keezer
Blackfive
Bleeding Brain
BLOGGER NEWS
Blowhards
Bob McCarty
Booker Rising
Brian Leiter scrutinized
Brothers Judd*
Brussels Journal
Bullied and Badgered, Pressured and Purged
Bureaucrash
Candle in dark
Catallarchy*
Classical Values
Clayton Cramer*
Climate audit
Climate science
Colby Cosh
Cold Fury
Common-sense & Wonder*
Community Pride Childcare
(Clearwater, Florida)
Confront the Left
Conservative Grapevine
Conservative Oasis
Conservative Political Forum
Conservatives Anonymous
Critical Mass
Cronaca*
Daily Caller
Danegerus
Dead Cat Bounce
Dean's World
Dhimmi Watch
Discover the networks
Discriminations
Dodge Blog
Dr Helen
Dr Sanity
Drunkablog
Ed Driscoll
Dyspepsia
Eddy Rants
Electric Venom
Endiana
Enter Stage Right
Eugene Undergound
Evangelical Ecologist
Fighting in the Shade
Find the best gun
Fourth Rail
Free Patriot
Gates of Vienna
Gay and Right
Gene Expression*
Ghost of Flea
Global warming & Climate
Gold Dog
Grumpy Old Sod
Hack Wilson
Hall of Record
Heretical Ideas
Hitler's Leftism
Hugh Hewitt
Hummers & Cigarettes
IMAO
Icecap
Inductivist
Instapunk
Intellectual Conservative
Interested Participant
Jihad Watch
Jim Kalb
Junk Food science
Junk Science
Just One Minute
KBJ
Knowledge is Power
Ladybird Deed
La Shawn
Laudator
Libertyphile
Lone Wacko
Lubos Motl
Luskin
MA firearm safety
Main Street Radical
Mangan
Margaret Thatcher Foundation
Maverick Philosopher
Medicine World
Michelle Malkin
Moderate Voice
Moorewatch
National Center
National Scene
Neo Con Blogger
Never Yet Melted
New Zeal
Northeastern Intelligence Network
Not PC
On the Right Side
Orator
Overlawyered
Parable Man
ParaPundit*
Pedestrian Infidel
Poli Pundit
Prof Bainbridge
Promethean Antagonist
Qando
Qohel
Random Observations
Rand Simberg
Random Jottings
Red State
Rhodey
Rhymes with Right
Right Nation
Right Thinking
Right Wing news
Roadkill
Ron Hebron
Rottweiler
Schansberg
SCSU Scholars*
Sharp Blades
Sharp Knife
Should Know
Shrinkwrapped
Silent Running
Smallest Minority
Squander 2
Steve Sailer
Stop the ACLU
Stuart Buck
Talking Head
Tim Worstall
Truth and consequences
Two-Four Net
Urban Conservative
Urgent Agenda
Vdare blog
View from Right
Viking Pundit
Vodka Pundit
Watt's up with that
Western Standard
Bill Whittle
What If
WICKED THOUGHTS*
Wiki Law
Winds of Change
Wizbang
World of Reason
World Terrorism news

Education Blogs

Early Childhood Education
Education Bug
Eduwonk
Joanne Jacobs*
Marc Miyake*

Economics Blogs

Adam Smith
Arnold Kling
Chicago Boyz
Cafe Hayek
Econopundit
Environmental Economics
Jane Galt
S. Karlson
D. Luskin
Marginal Revolution
Mises Inst.

Australian Blogs

A E Brain
Brookes News
Catallaxy
Fortress Australia
Kev Gillett
Hissink File
ICJS*
Oz Conservative
Slattery
Tim Blair
WESTERN HEART*
Cyclone's Sketchblog

England

Anglo Austrian
Burning our Money
Campaign Against Political Correctness
England Project
Norm Geras
House of Dumb
IQ & PC
Limbic Nutrition
Majority Rights*
NHS Doctor
Policeman
Samizdata
Sean Gabb
Sterling Times
Englishman's Castle

Scotland

Freedom & Whisky
A Place to Stand

ISRAEL

IsraPundit
Steven Plaut
Think Israel

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here