Dissecting Leftism

Sunday, January 14, 2024

CDC Ordered to Disclose Crucial Information From COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance System

The top U.S. public health agency must disclose information provided by people who experienced problems following COVID-19 vaccination, a federal court has ruled.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is being ordered to produce 7.8 million free-text entries from V-safe, one of its vaccine surveillance systems.

Data from the system released under court order in 2022 showed that 25 percent of V-safe participants missed school, work, or other normal activities due to post-vaccination issues, and nearly 8 percent of participants reported seeking medical attention, such as hospitalization after receiving a shot. That data, from boxes checked by users, came through an order in a case that started as a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
But the CDC resisted releasing the free-text entries, arguing that many of them include information that should remain private.

“CDC determined that many of these responses contain personally identifiable information, the disclosure of which would publicly link participants to highly sensitive health information,” government lawyers representing the agency said in one brief. “And because it would take tens of thousands of workhours to manually review and redact millions of free-text responses, CDC determined that segregating the non-exempt information within these responses would be unreasonably burdensome and was therefore beyond its FOIA obligations.”

The CDC said it would take one worker 59 years to complete the work if it were ordered.

The government’s arguments were rejected by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, in response to a fresh lawsuit.

“While the burden to produce the requested free-text responses may be heavy, this court does not find that it is unreasonable,” he said in the new ruling.

The CDC can go through the records and redact personally identifiable information as allowed by FOIA but must do the work and produce the records with the redactions, he added later. Evidence produced in the case indicates that about 93 percent of the records will require no redactions.

The materials will be important for people who experienced problems following vaccination, the judge said.

“Production of the free-text data will permit independent researchers to put the government agencies to their proof by considering all of the available data,” he said. He noted that CDC studies on v-safe data only covered data from the first week or two after vaccination but that the surveys collected data for up to one year after receipt of a shot.

The CDC must produce at least 390,000 free-text entries by Feb. 15. Freedom Coalition of Doctors for Choice, which brought the case in 2023, said the entries would be posted to its website.

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

V-safe is a system run by the CDC. Introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, it features people inputting information through a phone application. Participants are asked to provide basic information such as their name and check boxes that answer various questions, such as whether they missed school or work after vaccination. They can add additional information in a free-text area.

The portion where participants checked boxes did not include many adverse events the CDC thought the COVID-19 vaccines might end up causing, according to previously released documents.
Lawyers say the free-text entries will provide crucial details on those health issues and others.

The Informed Consent Action Network, which brought the case that resulted in the disclosure of some of the V-safe data, obtained a free-text entry from a V-safe user that showed her writing, at one point, “Help me!” She said she suffered from a number of symptoms, including nausea and vomiting, and went to the emergency department. Six months later, she wrote, “Still no response from CDC, no help from public health.”
“This ruling,” the network said in a statement, “sends a clear message to our federal agencies: we are not moving on and forgetting about the pandemic or the actions they took.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/cdc-ordered-to-disclose-crucial-information-from-covid-19-vaccine-surveillance-system-5564082?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=us-politics-left-medium-0

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Nurses in Queensland who were stood down during the pandemic for refusing to get a Covid vaccine are being sacked despite the lifting of mandates

Nurses in Queensland who were stood down during the pandemic for refusing to get a Covid vaccine are being sacked despite the lifting of mandates months ago.

Ella Leach, secretary of the Nurses Professional Association QLD, was one of those who was recently notified through a letter she had been fired, even though she is seven months pregnant.

'I should be focused on the joys of becoming a first time mum but it has been overshadowed by this whole process,' Ms Leach told Sky News Australia.

When asked why the Queensland Health Department would continue pursuing employees who are no longer in breach of any vaccine rule, Ms Leach said she felt the authority was 'doubling down' on its position during the pandemic.

In September 2021 all Queensland Health staff working in facilities where healthcare was provided were told they must be vaccinated for Covid, however, this directive was repealed in September 2023 by new director-general Michael Walsh.

'They're just trying to prove a point with us,' Ms Leach said. 'There's no sensible reason why they would continue with this action.'

'We know that our hospitals are screaming out for staff. We're seeing ambulances ramped outside hospitals, people dying in ambulances, our rural areas are suffering.'

Ms Leach said she was one of at least 50 staff she knew of that had been fired since September 25 last year.

Ms Leach's former employer Children's Health Queensland said in a statement it is 'unable to comment publicly on the employment situation, including disciplinary action, of individual staff'.

'Employee disciplinary matters are handled on a case by case basis and governed by robust and equitable processes.'

Ms Leach said she was aware some staff had been told they could reapply for their old jobs. 'In my role as the secretary I've seen hundreds of letters sent to staff about this matter.'

'They say they've been looked at on a case by case basis but they are templated letters and they insert what you've written back to them and say ''even if we haven't addressed your concern don't think we haven't taken it into account'',' she claimed. 'Then they just terminate you, it's disgraceful'.

'I've spoken to nurses who have lost their homes over this'.

In repealing the vaccine mandate, Mr Walsh said wide ranging advice had been submitted that informed the decision. This included employee feedback, expert clinical advice, official immunisation advice, and a 'human rights assessment'.

Similar vaccine mandates for health workers were lifted in NSW at the end of 2022 but the mandate still stands in Victoria.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12941457/Vaccine-mandates-nurses-stood-Queensland.html

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Management of Oral Lesions after COVID-19 Vaccination

I was always a bit prone to mouth ulcers but a natural remedy fixed them rapidly for me. A mouthful of salted peanuts taken during the day usually resulted in no ulcers the next day -- an extremely effective remedy. JR

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

I recently had a patient who had salivary gland problems after vaccination and when I looked in her mouth I saw unusual lesions at the orifice of the parotid duct. I wondered if there were any solutions.

Joseph et al published a brief summary of the litany of oral/facial problems that develop after COVID-19 vaccination.

“Most common oral lesions reported in the literature following COVID-19 vaccination include maculae, petechiae, desquamation, edema, erythema multiforme-like lesions, erosions, and ulcers on the hard palate, oral floor, lips, tongue, and gingiva (Chun et al., 2022; Mazur et al., 2021; Sayare et al., 2021). Few studies also reported pemphigus vulgaris, bullous pemphigoid, herpes zoster, lichen planus, Stevens–Johnson syndrome, Behçet's disease, Bell's palsy, facial swelling, and lips, face, or tongue swelling associated with anaphylaxis, burning mouth syndrome, and oral candidiasis (Chun et al., 2022; Mazur et al., 2021; Thongprasom et al., 2021).”

Then the authors go on to give some very practical solutions I plan to keep in mind for my clinic.

“In most cases, after consulting a physician to rule out any other medical issue, application of 0.1% dexamethasone solution thrice daily, 50 mg/g nystatin syrup five times daily, acyclovir ointment, and 0.1% chlorhexidine gargle twice daily relieved the symptoms. Similarly, lichen planus in the buccal mucosa resolved with 0.1% dexamethasone solution, nystatin solution (100,000 U/mL), and 0.1% dexamethasone gargle thrice daily. Neuropathic pain following the COVID-19 vaccination was managed by 0.5 mg clonazepam and 150 mg pregabalin daily. Burning-mouth syndrome was relieved using a 2% lidocaine gargle daily and 10 mg nortriptyline. Oral candidiasis cases found relief using 0.5 mg clonazepam and fluconazole syrup regularly. All cases were resolved within a varying period of 1 week to 1 month, while some even took up to 2 months. These treatments significantly relieved all symptoms, including tongue pain and ulcerative lesions. However, erythema of palatal gingiva took a few weeks longer (Chun et al., 2022).

It is recommended that after COVID-19 vaccination, patients may avoid high-intensity workouts, alcohol consumption, and smoking for a few days after vaccination.”

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/management-of-oral-lesions-after-covid-19-vaccination-a97e5d49

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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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Thursday, January 11, 2024

The Covid vaccine gave me side effects that ruined my life, but Facebook keeps censoring me from telling my friends about what happened

A woman who says she suffered chronic health complications after taking the AstraZeneca vaccine claims to have been censored from sharing her story on Facebook.

Caroline Pover, 52, received the jab in March 2021 and within nine hours, experienced convulsions, shivering, breathing difficulties and low blood pressure.

Ms Pover, of Cirencester, Gloucestershire, says she was hospitalised when her condition escalated to 'stroke-like' symptoms, in addition to exhaustion, breathing difficulties, a racing heart and migraines.

Her story was shared in a national newspaper in March last year as she and 800 other victims struggled to claim the Government's Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS).

But after sharing the link on her Facebook feed at the start of this year, Ms Pover says the website put a warning notice on her account.

Ms Pover, herself a freelance journalist and entrepreneur, said: 'My posts about what was happening to me started having FB “notes” appearing underneath them about vaccination.

'A group page I was an admin on was shut down completely by Facebook in the summer of 2021.

'When I posted the Daily Express article, which did an excellent job of not discussing anything pro or anti... I received a warning and the post was hidden.

'It's a ridiculous situation for vaccine-injured people, who have a right to information.

'If this was an online support group relating to cancer or another type of serious condition, we'd be outraged at the thought of it being censored and we'd be very sensitive to people having to navigate a very complicated health situation.'

Ms Pover said she made her first post about vaccine side effects on March 3, 2021, shortly after receiving a Covid jab.

She said: 'In the week that followed I was posting about my health and I always thought I'd be fine the next day.

'After a few weeks, I noticed that little notes from Facebook were appearing whenever I posted anything relating to the vaccine.'

Ms Pover claims she was subsequently 'shadow banned' on Facebook and that often, her posts failed to appear in the timelines of her friends and family.

She said: 'People would tag me in posts and complain that they weren't getting any traction. I'd say to them, "don't tag me, it will just disappear if you do."'

Ms Pover says that over time, the censorship led her to develop a specific writing style that would help prevent posts from being flagged up.

She has also written a book about people receiving adverse reactions from Covid jabs, which was picked up by a publisher last year.

And she says her experiences with censorship have only made her even more determined to share her message.

Ms Pover said: 'The physical health struggles we face aren't just what happens in the minutes, hours or days immediately after injection; it's what we are still dealing with years later, as well as the impact of being censored.'

Facebook has been approached for comment.

Elsewhere on the platform, UK CV Family - a private Facebook group with over 1,000 members for those who claim they were left injured or bereaved by the Covid vaccines - has had to take steps to avoid being shut down.

The group began in November 2021 Charlet Crichton, 42, after she suffered an adverse reaction from the AstraZeneca jab after it was given to her while she was volunteering at a vaccination centre in Folkestone, Kent.

The bad reaction led Ms Crichton to become bed bound for weeks and has since been forced to give up her sports therapy business which she ran for 13 years.

She told the paper: 'I set up the group because I was finding people online in the UK like me. And we felt we didn't have anyone to talk to about it apart from each other.'

The Facebook group is now one of three online groups for those bereaved by the vaccine to have been granted core-participant status in the Covid Inquiry.

This means Ms Crichton, who claims she suffered from myocarditis following the jab, and other members of the group will be able to give evidence throughout the statutory process.

In the page's description it stresses that it is 'not anti-vax' and asks participants to 'refrain from posting anything that suggests otherwise'.

'We very quickly learned that we had to self censor, otherwise we'd be shut down,' she added, explaining that her own comments had previously be blocked 'to prevent misuse'.

On one occasion Ms Critchon said her account was even banned after Meta claimed it did not meet its standards, while she claims others have been shadow banned - meaning individuals posts are hidden - over their comments.

'It's very, very difficult because we want to talk about what we're going through,' she added.

On a separate occasion, YouTube tried to censor a video of lawyers giving evidence at the Covid Inquiry about the vaccines. The streaming giant said the clip was a violation of 'medical misinformation policy'.

The paper also said that footage of Stephen Bowie, a member of the Scottish Vaccine Injury Group who suffered a spinal stroke and blood clots following the jab, was also flagged with a similar warning.

Molly Kingsley, the co-founder of Us4Them, said the restrictions put in place by social media platforms were 'Orwellian' after her views by the Government's Counter Disinformation Unit were allegedly criticsed by YouTube.

AstraZeneca said in a statement: 'Patient safety is our highest priority and regulatory authorities have clear and stringent standards to ensure the safe use of all medicines, including vaccines.

'Our sympathy goes out to anyone who has lost loved ones or reported health problems.

'From the body of evidence in clinical trials and real-world data, Vaxzevria has continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile and regulators around the world consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side effects.

'The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) has granted full marketing approval for Vaxzevria for the UK based on the safety profile and efficacy of the vaccine.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12942189/Covid-vaccine-effects-Facebook-censoring.html

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Fauci Admits 'Six-Foot Social Distancing' Was Based on Nothing During Closed-Door Testimony

During Dr. Anthony Fauci’s second day of his closed-door interrogation with members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the former head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases admitted shocking details about COVID-19.

The Committee, led by chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), dove into 14 hours of testimony where Fauci acknowledged that his six-foot social distancing recommendation “was likely not based on any data.”

“It just sort of appeared,” the GOP-led Committee wrote, quoting Fauci. “Dr. Fauci acknowledged that the lab-leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory.”

Nearly four years after civilization collapsed due to Democrats pushing a mostly non-life-threatening virus, Fauci suggested that his “recommendations”—AKA mandates— were based on the desire to control the sheep, which proved that the majority of society is obedient and uninformed.

The Committee revealed that Fauci “advised American universities to impose vaccine mandates on their students,” despite the former NIH director admitting that vaccine mandates could “increase vaccine hesitancy in the future.”

“This comes nearly four years after prompting the publication of the now infamous ‘Proximal Origin’ paper that attempted to vilify and disprove the lab-leak hypothesis,” the Committee wrote.

Wenstrup said things became very “evident” following Fauci’s two-day-long testimony, adding that the above admissions from the NIH official were suppressed completely.

“During his interview today, Dr. Fauci claimed that the policies and mandates he promoted may unfortunately increase vaccine hesitancy for years to come,” the Republican wrote in his findings. “Further, the social distancing recommendations forced on Americans ‘sort of just appeared’ and were likely not based on scientific data. “[The transcribed interview] revealed systemic failures in our public health system and shed a light on serious procedural concerns with our public health authority.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2024/01/10/fauci-admits-six-foot-social-distancing-was-based-on-nothing-during-closed-door-testimony-n2633443

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Censored!

Google has deleted the post that I put up here yesterday. It reported a very skeptical article about the Pfizer Covid vaccine.

Never mind, however as the post is still available on my backup site: https://johnjayray.com/jan24.html

Just scroll down tothe post of 9th.

The article is also still available on the site from which I took it:

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/ex-who-advisormrna-covid-19-vaccines-dangerous-09b8d28e

The originating story is here:

https://www.aussie17.com/p/my-story-by-professor-gabriel-oon

There were actually two articles in my post yesterday. The second was a perfectly rigorous statistical analysis of seasonal influences on Covid incidence. I can't see that Google would object to it so I have reprinted it under yesterday's date. It is also still available on the site from which I took it:

https://www.ceres-science.com/post/new-research-finds-the-natural-seasonality-of-coronaviruses-had-more-influence-on-the-covid-19-pande

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People More Likely to Suffer Vertigo, Tinnitus Soon After COVID-19 Vaccination: Study

People were more likely to present with tinnitus and vertigo shortly after COVID-19 vaccination, Australian researchers reported in a new study.

Some 65,468 visits to general practices with an audiovestibular problem were recorded in a database called POLAR that collects data from the practices, the researchers found. The visits, in Victoria and New South Wales, were more likely to happen within 42 days of a COVID-19 shot.

Another 678 problems relating to the ear were reported within 42 days of a vaccine dose to the Surveillance of Adverse Events Following Vaccination In the Community, or SAEFVIC, a surveillance system in Victoria, in the timeframe studied.

That timeframe was January 2021 to March 2023.

A safety signal, or sign the vaccines may cause the problems, was established for tinnitus and vertigo, according to the new paper.

Researchers found that there was an increase in general practice visits with vertigo following a Moderna or Pfizer vaccination, and visits with tinnitus after a Moderna, Pfizer, or AstraZeneca vaccine. At the same time, there was no increase in visits with hearing loss.

New COVID Variant Spreading in US, but Risk Is Low: Experts
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use modified messenger RNA (mRNA) technology while AstraZeneca’s vaccine uses an adenovirus.

A separate analysis of SAEFVIC found that reports of audiovestibular problems were more common after AstraZeneca vaccination than after a Moderna or Pfizer shot. That analysis excluded, owing to what researchers said were insufficient records, reports of problems after certain kinds of COVID-19 vaccines, including one version of Pfizer’s vaccine and Novavax’s vaccine.

“This is the first study that demonstrates an increase in audiovestibular presentations following COVID-19 vaccination, in particular, vertigo and tinnitus. Healthcare providers and vaccinees should be alert to potential audiovestibular complaints after COVID-19 vaccination,” Dr. Aishwarya Shetty, with the Centre for Health Analytics at The Melbourne Children’s Campus, and her co-authors wrote.

The paper was published ahead of peer review on the medRxiv server. Dr. Shetty did not respond to a request for comment, including whether the study has been submitted to any journals for peer review. Pfizer and the other vaccine manufacturers did not respond to requests for comment.

Methods

Tinnitus, or ringing in the head, has particularly been previously linked in case reports and patient accounts with COVID-19 vaccination.

To explore the possible relationship, the Australian group took the primary care data and conducted what’s called a self-controlled case series. In such an analysis, comparisons are made using the same people but different periods of time. In this study, the method involved examining visits for audiovestibular conditions and separating out visits that happened within 42 days of vaccination. Any visits in the time periods before and after that window were used as comparison.

For all audiovestibular conditions, including hearing loss, people were more likely to present within 42 days of vaccination than during the other time periods. When analyzing by specific condition, the increased risk of vertigo after mRNA vaccination and the increased risk of tinnitus after all vaccines was statistically significant while the increased risk of hearing loss was not.

The researchers also calculated the rates of reports of the conditions made to SAEFVIC per 100,000 doses. They found people were about two times more likely to suffer from most hearing problems after AstraZeneca vaccination than after Pfizer or Moderna vaccination.

The rates of reported audiovestibular conditions were 9.7 per 100,000 AstraZeneca doses and 5 per 100,000 mRNA shots. The rates of reported vertigo cases were 5.9 per 100,000 AstraZeneca doses and 3.1 per 100,000 mRNA doses, while the rates of reported cases of tinnitus were 3.2 per 100,000 AstraZeneca doses and 1.7 per 100,000 mRNA doses.

One theory to explain the difference is that older people, who face a greater risk of vertigo, predominantly received the AstraZeneca vaccine, the researchers said.

Some previous papers, such as one from the United States, have not found an increase in tinnitus after COVID-19 vaccination, but those mostly relied on self-reports “and are prone to recall bias,” according to the Australian researchers.
Limitations of the paper included not capturing people who reported to health care settings outside of general practices.

The authors reported no conflicts of interest. Funding was listed by the Department of Health in Victoria.

Increased Risk Versus Unvaccinated

In another new study released on medRxiv, South Korean researchers reported finding vaccinated people were at increased risk of tinnitus and ear disease when compared to unvaccinated people.

Taking data from a national health care database, the researchers said vaccinated people three months after vaccination had increased rates of tinnitus, inner ear disease, middle ear disease, and other ear disease.

The researchers said the results showed COVID-19 vaccination “significantly increased” the risks of what they described as non-fatal adverse events, such as tinnitus.

The group found that females were more likely to suffer from tinnitus and ear disease than males, and that people who received a non-mRNA vaccine were more likely to suffer from tinnitus and inner ear disease than those who received an mRNA shot. On the other hand, the risk was about the same across vaccine types for middle ear disease and higher for mRNA recipients for other ear disease.

The researchers reported no conflicts of interest and no funding.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/people-more-likely-to-suffer-vertigo-tinnitus-soon-after-covid-19-vaccination-study-5536583?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=top-news-australia-top-news-0-large-top-news-australia-top-news-title-1

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UK: The conspiracy of silence around Covid even four years on betrays our values

It is more than four years since the World Health Organisation was tipped off about a mysterious new disease that had emerged in Wuhan. This proved to be the start of a deadly pandemic as the virus hurtled round the planet, sparking the most serious public health catastrophe for a century.

Now, it is beyond dispute that China’s dictatorship covered up Covid’s eruption in Wuhan – with disastrous consequences. The regime’s officials hid the initial outbreak, silenced whistleblowers and censored data that could have saved millions of lives.

Yet, last year, when Michael Gove told the UK Covid-19 inquiry there was ‘a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made’ he was slapped down as the lead counsel, Hugo Keith, told him: ‘We’re not going to go there.’

So this bloated, costly inquiry is happy to admonish British politicians while ignoring the much bigger issue of whether the pandemic was sparked by cutting-edge scientific research or if there was ‘natural’ transmission from infected animals.

Keith’s hasty response reflected the desperate efforts of Western political, scientific and media establishments to stifle such discussion as they kowtow to China’s bullying rulers and cover up funding ties to risky research outsourced to Wuhan labs.

Zero reliable evidence has emerged to back claims of zoonotic (animal to animal) transmission. But there has been a steady trickle of evidence to suggest that it may be no coincidence that Covid emerged in the city with China’s maximum bio-safety lab, the biggest repository of bat coronaviruses in Asia.

I have reported on these issues since early 2020 – and it has been deeply disturbing to witness systemic attempts to shackle debate for it corrodes public confidence in science, politics and the media.

Obstruction has been led by heads of key American and British funding bodies. Yet last month a study disclosed 309 laboratory-acquired infections between 2000 and 2021 – along with 16 cases of pathogens escaping a laboratory.

Alarming details about the work in Wuhan and China’s cover-up have been exposed along with concerns over ‘Wild West’ safety and details of secret schemes to boost the infectivity of coronaviruses.

Today, there is growing acceptance that a laboratory incident might have caused the pandemic.

While no one knows for sure the answer to this scientific riddle, one thing is clear. There has been a toxic conspiracy of silence in collusion with China over Covid’s origins that has betrayed the values of democracy and science.

This undermines all efforts to prepare for the next pandemic.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12934455/Conspiracy-Covid-four-years-betrays-IAN-BIRRELL.html

Tuesday, January 09, 2024

New research finds the natural seasonality of coronaviruses had more influence on the COVID-19 pandemic than government interventions

A new international study on the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in six northern European countries has unexpectedly discovered that the pre-existing seasonal nature of coronaviruses may have played more of a role during the pandemic than any of the government public health intervention policies – including vaccinations, lockdowns, masks and travel restrictions. The scientific study was published in the peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Clinical Medicine.

The international team of scientists and medical experts used 10 years of human coronavirus monitoring data collected in Sweden before the pandemic to estimate the seasonal variations in coronavirus incidence in northern Europe. They then used publicly available data on the COVID-19 pandemic for six northern European countries (Ireland, UK, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland) to compare the relative contributions to the progression of the pandemic in each country of: (1) seasonality; (2) vaccination programmes; and (3) other public health measures. They studied the various waves of the pandemic from early 2020 until May 2023, when the WHO declared the public health emergency over.

The authors found that the increases and decreases of each wave consistently followed the natural seasonal behaviour of coronaviruses – increasing during the winter “cold and flu season” and decreasing during the summer. In contrast, the scientific team were surprised to find no clear or consistent influence from either the vaccination programmes or the many public health interventions that were implemented.

The lead author, Dr. Gerry Quinn, a research scientist specialising in microbiology and immunology, described the significance of these surprising findings as follows:

“Since the start of the pandemic, governments and societies around the world have been implementing unprecedented measures in an attempt to control the spread of the virus. Whenever cases began to fall, many people believed that this was due to the public health interventions. But, a careful examination of all the available data shows that this belief was mistaken. It now transpires that most of the changes were probably due to natural seasonal changes of coronaviruses.”

Another author of the study, Prof. Karol Sikora (Medical Director of Cancer Partners International and Consultant Oncologist; former Director of the WHO Cancer Programme), emphasised:

“The finding that most of the apparent successes of the government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were actually due to the natural seasonality of coronaviruses makes the negative health impacts of the lockdowns and other interventions even more disturbing. In the UK, we are still reeling from the harms these policies caused for cancer treatment and diagnosis and many other health concerns throughout the pandemic. Now, it seems that these dramatic health interventions did not even noticeably alter the progression of the pandemic.”

Prof. Norman Fenton, a Professor Emeritus of Risk at Queen Mary University of London and a mathematician who specialises in data analysis and statistics, was also a co-author. He warned that,

“From the beginning of the pandemic, there have been major problems in the interpretation of the publicly available COVID-19 data. During the first waves, health agencies were still developing, changing and increasing testing capacity. This meant that initial attempts to evaluate the COVID-19 public health measures were hindered by inconsistencies in the official data. Ambiguities in the definitions of COVID-19 vaccination statuses also led to considerable confusion in assessing the impacts of the vaccination programmes. Another problem was that many of the model-based studies only considered either the first or the second wave.

However, this comprehensive new study overcame many of these statistical challenges by considering five different indicators of the pandemic and separately analysing each country over multiple waves of the pandemic. The results show that the overwhelming influence of seasonality created a false, and scientifically invalid, confidence in the many previously untested public health interventions that most governments used.”

https://www.ceres-science.com/post/new-research-finds-the-natural-seasonality-of-coronaviruses-had-more-influence-on-the-covid-19-pande

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Monday, January 08, 2024

'Vaccine victims' left with life-changing injuries from the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid jab say they've been censored online when speaking out

I have put this up as a free-speech issue but it is of course a medical issue too. So I thought I might mention that I got two shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine and did not get even a sore arm out of it. And I gather that most recipients were not significantly troubled by it. So the people who are complaining below may be:

1). Blaming the vaccine for some injury that had another cause. Many things may oocur in close sequence without one causing the other.

2). Affected by some rare pre-existing physical condition that interacted with the vaccine.

In both cases it is a bit much to blame the vaccine-makers for failing to see and prevent the problems concerned

People who were left with life-changing injuries after being given the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid jab claim they have been censored while trying to speak out on social media about their symptoms.

They believe they are vaccine victims who suffered a number of severe reactions, including a father-of-two who formed a blood clot after being given the vaccine in spring 2021 causing a permanent brain injury.

The man is in the process of suing the pharmaceutical giant at the High Court in London over the injury, while the widower of a woman who died from the jab has also brought a claim.

Now other 'victims' who claim they reacted badly to the jab who are not involved in legal proceedings have claimed sites such as Facebook have given them 'warnings' when they have tried to speak to others about their experiences.

They alleged that they are being forced to 'self censor' and speak in cryptic language to avoid having groups shut down, the Telegraph reported.

UK CV Family - a private Facebook group with over 1,000 members for those who claim they were left injured or bereaved by the Covid vaccines - has had to take steps to avoid being shut down.

The group began in November 2021 Charlet Crichton, 42, after she suffered an adverse reaction from the AstraZeneca jab after it was given to her while she was volunteering at a vaccination centre in Folkestone, Kent.

The bad reaction led Ms Crichton to become bed bound for weeks and has since been forced to give up her Sports Therapy business which she ran for 13 years.

She told the paper: 'I set up the group because I was finding people online in the UK like me. And we felt we didn't have anyone to talk to about it apart from each other.'

The Facebook group is now one of three online groups for those bereaved by the vaccine to have been granted core-participant status in the Covid Inquiry.

This means Ms Crichton, who claims she suffered from myocarditis following the jab, and other members of the group will be able to give evidence throughout the statutory process.

In the page's description it stresses that it is 'not anti-vax' and asks participants to 'refrain from posting anything that suggests otherwise'.

'We very quickly learned that we had to self censor, otherwise we'd be shut down,' she added, explaining that her own comments had previously be blocked 'to prevent misuse'.

On one occasion Ms Critchon said her account was even banned after Meta claimed it did not meet its standards, while she claims others have been shadow banned - meaning individuals posts are hidden - over their comments.

'It's very, very difficult because we want to talk about what we're going through,' she added.

On a separate occasion, YouTube tried to censor a video of lawyers giving evidence at the Covid Inquiry about the vaccines. The streaming giant said the clip was a violation of 'medical misinformation policy'.

The paper also said that footage of Stephen Bowie, a member of the Scottish Vaccine Injury Group who suffered a spinal stroke and blood clots following the jab, was also flagged with a similar warning.

Molly Kingsley, the co-founder of Us4Them, said the restrictions put in place by social media platforms were 'Orwellian' after her views by the Government's Counter Disinformation Unit were allegedly criticsed by YouTube.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12935953/victim-life-changing-injuries-jab-speaking-censored.html

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Why Florida's Surgeon General Has Called for a 'Halt' in the Use of mRNA COVID Vaccines

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo is calling for a “halt” in the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines over a health risk federal officials dispute.

In a Dec. 6 letter, Ladapo addressed his concerns “pertaining to the safety assessments and the discovery of billions of DNA fragments per dose of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines” to the directors of the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But federal officials have strongly disagreed with his assessment.

A top FDA official last month pushed back against Ladapo and what the FDA called "the proliferation of misinformation" on vaccine safety.

Ladapo raised concerns about the agency's approval of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in a Dec. 6 letter to FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf and CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen. His letter cited a pre-print study that, according to the surgeon general, showed there are "billions of DNA fragments per dose of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines."

Pointing to FDA guidance on vaccines that "use novel methods of delivery regarding DNA integration," Ladapo questioned whether the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines had been assessed to meet FDA's standards, noting a potential risk of cancer.

In a written response, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, wrote that it is "implausible" that residual small DNA fragments could find their way into the nucleus of human cells and then alter DNA to cause cancer.

"We would like to make clear that based on a thorough assessment of the entire manufacturing process, FDA is confident in the quality, safety, and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines," Marks wrote in a Dec. 14 letter. "Additionally, with over a billion doses of the mRNA vaccines administered, no safety concerns related to residual DNA have been identified." (Fox News)

But Ladapo said the FDA’s response did not adequately address his concerns.

“The FDA’s response does not provide data or evidence that the DNA integration assessments they recommended themselves have been performed,” he said in a statement. “Instead, they pointed to genotoxicity studies – which are inadequate assessments for DNA integration risk. In addition, they obfuscated the difference between the SV40 promoter/enhancer and SV40 proteins, two elements that are distinct.

“DNA integration poses a unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients,” Ladapo continued. “If the risks of DNA integration have not been assessed for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2024/01/03/florida-surgeon-general-calls-for-halt-in-the-use-of-mrna-covid-vaccines-n2633142

Sunday, January 07, 2024

Apparently, Elderly Patients in Europe Died After Receiving the Pfizer Vaccine. Why Has There Been No Widespread Reporting?

Late last year, TrialSite News reported on a Brown University study analyzing the Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines. “The study team summarized that when comparing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b2 with Moderna (mRNA-1273), the latter was associated with a lower risk of adverse events, possibly due to improved protection against COVID-19. Put another way, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine represents a higher-risk product for the elderly.

Yet this finding has never seen the light of day in mainstream media. “However, though not widespread, there have been some reports on the risk of the Covid vaccine to the elderly. TrialSite reported all during the pandemic from one concern to another involving regulatory shortcuts, to anomalies to hundreds of articles involving COVID-19 vaccine injuries with Pfizer-BioNTech. A group of scientists known as “Team #3” found bombshell information that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was associated with over twice the number of deaths during the pivotal 20-week clinical trial than the placebo group. The scientists found that data was suppressed by Pfizer, hence the FDA would not have been able to detect the safety signal.

Reports in 2021

In February of 2021, an article about all 78 elderly residents of a Spanish nursing home in Madrid developing COVID-19 after being vaccinated with the Pfizer jab surfaced. Note the article was published in the Global Times, which is a China-based media, and thus does raise a question of objectivity.

The residents contracted the virus after receiving the first dose of the shot and seven of them died. But in November of the same year, an article was published claiming deaths attributed to the Covid jab in Spain, “cannot be linked to Covid-19 vaccines by the mere fact of being notified until a study confirms the causal relationship between the vaccine and death or the serious side effect."

In other words, if a person dies due to a blood clot a few days after getting vaccinated against COVID-19, there is an undeniable possibility that this may have occurred for other reasons than the COVID-19 vaccine.

But Spain wasn’t the only country in Europe to report elderly deaths after receiving the Pfizer Covid shot. Norway investigated the demise of 23 seniors after getting the Pfizer jab. The Norwegian Medicines Agency labeled the victims as “frail” and such common adverse reactions to the mRNA vaccine such as nausea and fever may have contributed to the deaths.

In a statement, the agency said, “We cannot rule out that adverse reactions to the vaccine occurring within the first days following vaccination (such as fever and nausea) may contribute to a more serious course and fatal outcome in patients with severe underlying disease.” This news was covered by mainstream CNN.

However, also The British Medical Journal (BMJ) went further. It published an article in May of 2021, saying the Norwegian review said the “Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine is ‘likely’ to have been responsible for at least 10 deaths of frail elderly people in nursing homes in Norway, an expert review commissioned by the Norwegian Medicines Agency has concluded.”

The Norwegian report further conveyed that even though the mortality rate in nursing homes was generally very high and deaths of nursing home residents were anticipated after vaccination, the review concluded “a causal link between the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and death was considered ‘likely’ in 10 of the 100 cases, ‘possible’ in 26 cases, and ‘unlikely’ in 59 cases. The remaining five were deemed ‘unclassifiable.’”

In Switzerland, at least 16 elderly people reportedly died after receiving the Covid vaccine according to the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products (Swissmedic). The agency said it had recorded about 364 suspected adverse drug reactions, with 199 incidents linked to the vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and 154 to the Moderna jab.

TrialSite also tracked data in Australia after mass vaccination with both mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. By the end of Q1 2022—a period when nearly the entire Australian population was fully vaccinated—more than double the number of people who died from COVID-19 in those three months than all of 2020 and 2021 combined. See “Heavily Vaxxed Australia First 3.5 Months of 2022 has Double the COVID-19 Deaths from 2020-2021 Combined.”

Underreported

Last year, Northern Irish politicians were complaining about the underreporting of deaths related to the COVID-19 vaccines. In June of 2021, MDPI, which is a publisher of peer-reviewed open-access journals, published a paper by a group of European medical professionals questioning the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, which was later retracted. Members of the journal’s board resigned afterward.

The question is, why does the possible danger of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine seem to be covered up and what kind of power and influence does the pharmaceutical company have over the European Union and the United States?

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/apparently-elderly-patients-in-europe-died-after-receiving-the-pfizer-vaccine.-why-has-there-been-no-widespread-reporting-c84d89a3

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Florida Clinic Conducting Large Ivermectin Study Targeting COVID-19

Dr. Patrick Robinson and his partner Dana Robinson run the Matters of Beauty aesthetics and med spa clinic in San Antonio, Florida. The duo registered a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulated cohort, a prospective observational study targeting 1,000 patients.

Can the clinic’s patients who opt for ivermectin as a regimen against COVID-19 have a faster path to recovery and keep out of the hospital more than others? The Robinsons are to be commended for making the investment to study the benefits of ivermectin formally. They are following other front-line physicians who made the investment to design and execute formal, organized studies including another Florida-based husband and wife team Drs. Jean-Jacques Rajter and Juliana Cepelowicz both with Broward Health, who led the well-known ICON study, with promising results published in the journal Chest.

Also, Malibu, California-based Dr. Sabine Hazan, a pioneer in microbiome-based research, became the first independent physician to formally register an ivermectin-based clinical trial in the United States during the pandemic. While other physicians have established practices involving ivermectin in various protocols, such efforts were based on their own formal studies within their clinics, registered in Clinicaltrials.gov, for example.

The study, registered in Clinicltrials.gov in May 2022, is scheduled to conclude this May 2024.

The Study

Patients at local physician clinics, as well as my Matters of Beauty, are enrolled when they are evaluated for COVID-19. Patients enrollment is, of course, voluntary and based on their request for treatment with ivermectin.

These patients will be questioned on symptoms and the timing of those symptoms in detail. They will then be followed throughout their treatment course to evaluate their recovery experience. Detailed accounts of their symptoms and their resolution will be followed.

The study patients will stop being followed when they are either admitted to the hospital or are deemed to be symptom-free. Any other medications prescribed to the patients will also be tracked. Medical histories will be taken and documented to make comparisons at the end of the study. Those patients not requesting ivermectin will also be followed for comparisons at a later date.

What are the study’s two cohorts?

As delineated in the national registry, Dr. Robinson and his wife Dana designed two cohorts, including A) the ivermectin cohort and B) the non-ivermectin cohort.

What are the primary outcome measures?

This study includes two primary outcome measures, including 1) complete recovery from COVID-19 with resolution of symptoms following a 4–6-week timeline per participant and 2) admission to hospital for further treatment within the same 4–6-week timeline per participant. In this latter case, the patient was unable to recover at home and thus needed hospital admission.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/florida-clinic-conducting-large-ivermectin-study-targeting-covid-19-0a6a4464

Thursday, January 04, 2024

Grand Inquisitor Says Oops

Francis Collins was head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—Anthony Fauci’s parent bureaucracy—during the wreckage caused by the COVID response. Ultimately, Dr. Collins bears a huge measure of the responsibility for the disaster, even if he played the role of the stooge.

It was he who wrote Fauci with the demand for a “quick and devastating takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement that merely reasserted traditional public health wisdom in the midst of an insane science experiment being conducted on the whole population.
Five months ago, an organization that seeks political consensus hosted him for some frank talk about what happened. Here is what he had to say:

There is a sense in which he didn’t need to say this at all. We all knew it. They were thinking only about New York City. The rest of the country never had anything approaching a crisis. The government under Collins emptied hospitals out from coast to coast to reserve them for COVID patients who only arrived much later and never came close to overwhelming health care services.

Meanwhile, the entire country was plunged into a grave crisis at every level—a man-made crisis of the worst sort.

Nor did they think about anything other than this one pathogen. It was a wild fanaticism that seized the whole of the ruling class for the better part of two years. None of it made sense but those who objected could hardly get a hearing. Instead, they were smeared, censored, and often fired for non-compliance.

Even as late as December 2021, Collins was still fear-mongering. He told NPR concerning Christmas celebrations:

“We were planning to invite some of the trainees at NIH who are far from home to come for a brunch on Christmas Day at our house if they’re all fully vaccinated and boosted. Still planning to go forward, very carefully, with a small group, and everybody will be wearing masks except when they’re eating.”

Note that Collins doesn’t apologize. He takes no responsibility. He just continues his masquerade as a tennis-shoe wearing, guitar-strumming, Jesus-loving grandpa who is open and broad-minded, never mind that he wielded absolute power over all our lives only a few years ago.

Later in the interview, he is singing hosannas to the glorious vaccines and how perfectly they worked. We are nowhere near approaching the point where people like this tell the truth. It’s almost like they cannot bear it.

Even in this interview, Collins’s nonchalant delivery is infuriating. You want to scream back: you wrecked the lives of hundreds of millions of people! And no one ever gave you the authority to do so!

Meanwhile, it was incredibly obvious to many at the time that disaster would be the only result of lockdowns. The bit about masking was never serious; no one in the know seriously believed these things would protect anyone from a tiny pathogen with an animal reservoir. The only solution was the traditional one from public health wisdom: preserve normalcy, treat the sick with known therapeutics, and alert the vulnerable to stay away from large crowds until the virus becomes endemic.

Collins directly attacked this solution and demanded that government attack it and ultimately censor it!

As we approach the end of the year, we are surrounded by a cultural and economic darkness this generation has never seen before. Most incredibly, public health itself is wrecked.

Let’s just count the ways. Each consequence dates from the beginnings of the lockdowns. That was the turning point, the end of innocence, the great reset, the moment when the choice between freedom and despotism weighed heavily in the most inhumane direction.

Consider:

Homeless people are everywhere at record highs (650K), stemming from rampant mental disorder, substance abuse, and incredibly tight leasing standards stemming from the eviction moratorium.

The middle class can no longer afford to buy a home thanks to high rates from the Fed, deployed in an attempt to mitigate against inflation which is still running hot.

Every merchant has hidden fees in everything, struggling to find some way to hide the hot potato of inflation that has eaten 20-plus percent of the dollar’s purchasing power since 2019.

Shoplifting is a major national problem to the point that thousands of stores have closed.

Shrinkflation affects everything. The groceries have shrunk and the bills have soared—a direct consequence of some $8 trillion in stimulus and money printing.

Office real estate in large cities is approaching an accounting crisis because people are not returning to work, their routines totally shattered by lockdowns.

Travel is uncertain with endless delays and cancellations due to pilot shortages stemming from stay-at-home orders, vaccine mandates, and rampant illness.

The “great reset” is all around us, as we are constantly nudged to drive EVs, live without comforts, buy less meat, and even eat bugs.

A wide-open Southern border has created an immigration crisis as government neglected its core duties in favor of insane methods of virus control.

Restaurants are unaffordable for most people. Dependency on government handouts is 28 percent higher than in 2019. All stores close an hour or two earlier because they cannot get workers to stay later.

The learning losses among the kids are unfathomable, two years and rising, and perhaps an entire generation is lost.

There is a population-wide mental-health crisis in addition to rampant substance abuse.

The federal budget has been blown to smithereens. Political divisions are festering as never before, with neither party willing to discuss the COVID elephant in the room.

Our conception of what it means to live in freedom with a government that knows limits to its power has slipped away.

Arts venues are struggling for dear life to survive. World trade is shattered, with new trading blocs replacing the old ones.

The rise of maniacal gender dysphoria of the young is probably connected with this: endless hours online, loss of confidence in the world as it is, plus loneliness.

One could argue that even the war in Israel and Gaza is a result: security concerns were neglected in favor of microbial activism and shot mandates, and the loss of a moral center to policy then unleashed successive rounds of violence.

Finally, there is the loss of trust in everything: government, public health, pharmaceuticals, academia, science, media, and each other. Society cannot function without trust. Not even churches are immune from broad incredulity since most went along with the COVID response in every detail.

This only begins to scratch the surface of what we’ve lost and what has replaced it. Ultimately all such tragedies come down to individual lives. These days you hear them only among friends and families. And they are terrible stories of sadness and personal despair. The pain is only intensified by the silence on the part of all corporate media, government, and other commanding heights. Because of the news block on the whole topic, there is mass and festering anger beneath the surface.

And yet here is this granddad—the man ostensibly in charge over the whole operation—telling us old war stories of mistakes that were made. Does he have any idea of the carnage he caused? Does he even care?

In Dostoevsky’s version of the Grand Inquisitor, the nemesis predicts: “In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/grand-inquisitor-says-oops-5555787?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=opinion-2

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Australian Court Reverses Millions in COVID-19 Fines

More than $36 million (US$24.5 million) in COVID-19 infringements were withdrawn this year by the New South Wales (NSW) fines commissioner following a landmark Supreme Court ruling.

Thousands of fines were issued by NSW Police to members of the public who allegedly contravened health orders during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.

But in a landmark ruling in November 2022, Justice Dina Yehia said the fines were not valid because they did not include a sufficiently detailed description of the offences.

Following this ruling, the NSW Commissioner of Fines Administration withdrew four types of public health order fines which were similar to the ones examined during the Supreme Court case.

These included unlawfully participating in an outdoor public gathering and failing to comply with the requirement of public health order.

According to the NSW Customer Service department’s annual report, $36.3 million in fines were reversed in 2023 following the commissioner’s decision.

A spokesperson for Revenue NSW said this amounted to about 36,600 fines being withdrawn.

“The decision to withdraw these fines does not mean the offences were not committed, but that the fine notices in question had insufficient descriptions of the offences committed,” the spokesperson said.

As of Nov. 20, around 90 per cent of the withdrawn COVID-19 fines had been refunded and the remaining were in the process of being refunded.

A total of 62,138 COVID-19 related fines were issued by police during the pandemic.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/australian-court-reverses-millions-in-covid-19-fines-5555494

Wednesday, January 03, 2024

Researchers Point to Statistically Significant Autoimmune & Auto-Inflammatory Adverse Event Incidence Post COVID-19 Vax

Mostly small effects but not all

Biomedical researchers from prominent academic research centers in both South Korea and the United States conducted a study identifying 3620 autoimmune-related adverse events among 223.2 million US residents using Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System and the COVID-19 Data Tracker.

Seong-Jan Kim an expert in nuclear medicine from Pusan National University Yangsan Hospital and Sung Ryul Shim, an epidemiological researcher at Konyang University and Yale University-based pharmaco-epidemiologist and mental health investigator Taeho Greg Rhee declare their recent investigation published in the journal Clinical Immunology is the first to quantify the cumulative incidence of autoimmune and auto-inflammatory adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination. This includes an accounting of autoimmune and auto-inflammatory adverse events across six major classes of medical conditions and stratified by age, sex, as well as COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer.

The study involves an accounting of the investigators’ initiative to estimate the cumulative incidence (CIR) of autoimmune and autoinflammatory adverse reactions per 100,000 people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in the United States.

Study Method

Following STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) reporting guidelines, the authors point out that as publicly available de-identified data was used for the study, it was exempted by the Institutional Review Boards at Konyang University and Yale School of Medicine.

Finding

Tapping into both the U.S. VAERS as well as the CDC Data Tracker databases, the study authors for this investigation report 3620 autoimmune and autoinflammatory adverse events (AEs) across 223,270,498 fully vaccinated individuals in the United States.

A study duration starting upon first administration of the COVID-19 vaccines based on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use authorization (December 2020) to September 2022, the reports of AEs by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Janssen groups

Measuring statistical significance at p<0.05, the following adverse event classes were identified:

Cardiovascular and/or pulmonary events (Pfizer-BioNTech 0.109; Moderna 0.180 and Janssen 0.170); Hematologic events (Pfizr-BioNTech 0.195; Modern 0.283 and Janssen 0.217);

Musculoskeletal events (Pfizer-BioNTech 0.554; Moderna 0.738 and Janssen 9.422) and Other events (Pfizer-BioNTech 0.198; Moderna 0.259 and Janssen 0.211).

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/researchers-point-to-statistically-significant-autoimmune-auto-inflammatory-adverse-event-incidence-post-covid-19-vax-8da1bf67

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City University of New York & Pfizer Study: COVID-19 Infected, Vaxxed Americans Mostly Reject Pfizer & Merck Antivirals

TrialSite was at the forefront of reporting the boom in use of ivermectin and other off-label regimen such as hydroxychloroquine and even fluvoxamine during the earlier stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most physicians in North America initially learned of the use of ivermectin in research or in COVID-19 care scenarios in low-and middle-income countries as TrialSite chronicled this activity early on in the pandemic.

TrialSite also chronicled the substantial public investment the National Institutes of Health (NIH) made in novel branded pharmaceutical antiviral development during the pandemic, including those developed by Pfizer (Paxlovid) and Merck (molnupiravir). The market was targeted in the several billions per annum given SARS-CoV-2 was to persist—the biomedical research establishments worldwide made the faulty assumption at first that sterilizing vaccines would eradicate viral transmission, leading to herd immunity. When it became clear that this was not the case—that the vaccines would not do a good job of stopping viral transmission and that SARS-CoV-2 would continue to mutate, the antiviral market was considered a winner by pharmaceutical analysts. See “Feds Now See the Need for Funding Antivirals: TrialSite Will Track the Spend, Carefully.”

During the pandemic, what was especially disturbing to both industry and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was a report by TrialSite on an obscure study revealing ivermectin use in America surged from about 3,000 prescriptions per week pre-pandemic to nearly 90,000 prescriptions per week during the height of the pandemic. This kind of data raised the risk of off label generic competition.

An aggressive series of public health programs were unleashed, some terming it propaganda including the FDA’s frontal attack on ivermectin. Ultimately, the FDA lost in a lawsuit by frontline doctors arguing the agency overstepped its mandate. Regardless, Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s molnupiravir were to be key antiviral medications in the transition from the COVID-19 pandemic to endemic status.

But much like how the market in America has rejected the COVID-19 vaccines at this point, so too are these antivirals routinely for the most part, avoided despite the greenlight from the FDA. In fact, according to a recent study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, despite any surges in the number of COVID-19 cases, Americans tended to avoid these products.

In this prospective cohort study involving persons infected with COVID-19 between December 2021 and October 2022, the authors representing the CHASING COVID Cohort Study Team describe the uptake of Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir/ritonavir) and Molnupiravir (MOV) among a cohort of highly vaccinated adults across America.

Representing the authors is corresponding authors Yanhan Shen, MS, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at City University of New York (CUNY), Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health. Other authors are affiliated with CUNY and Pfizer.

Findings

While overall and not surprisingly, uptake did increase during the study period given surges in underlying COVID-19, overall demand was depressed among the cohort under investigation. This was especially true among African Americans/Blacks and low income Americans.

For example, of those infected, in the study sample of 1,594 only 13.6% (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.9% to 15.2%) opted for Pfizer’s Paxlovid. The situation for Merck was far bleaker—out of 1,398 participants only 1.4% of infected individuals opted for MOV (95% CI, 0.8% to 2.1%).

Undoubtedly, due to a confluence of factors including company marketing and government promotion, Paxlovid use grew substantially during the study period. By December 2021 and March 2022, 1.9% of the total subgroup consumed the drug once infected. That percentage surged to 25.3% between August and October 2022. But the data supports the financial data TrialSite reports on Pfizer’s grim COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral sales numbers. See TrialSite “Pfizer Bloodbath? Collapse of COVID-19 Revenues.”

Given that during the entire study period a majority of participants could access antivirals (Paxlovid 85%; MOV 84%), the study team did find that individuals aged 65 and up opted to use the antivirals more than others. For example, among the elderly cohort Paxlovid use was higher at 30.2% (95% CI, 22.2% to 38.2).

Not surprisingly, participants with comorbidities had higher uptake rates as well.

Interestingly, although COVID-19 at least according to some studies impacted African Americans more than Whites and other racial groups, non-Hispanic Black participants opted to mostly stay away from the COVID-19 antivirals (7.2%[95% CI: 2.4%-12.0%]). Also, low-income groups avoided the products relative to other higher income groups (10.6%%[95% CI:7.3%-13.8%]).

What about persons with long COVID versus those without the condition? This cohort was found to take the Paxlovid more frequently (22.0% vs. 7.9%; P=0.001).

Of 216 persons prescribed Paxlovid, 137 (63%[95% CI: 57%-70%]) reported the antiviral as helpful in reducing symptoms.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/cuny-pfizer-study-covid-19-infected-vaxxed-americans-mostly-reject-pfizer-merck-antivirals-8a4cf5ec

Tuesday, January 02, 2024

A New Report Claims US Medical Officials Knew Covid Vaccines Didn’t Prevent the Spread of Variants of the Disease but Pushed Mandates Anyway

In August of 2021, the former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, instituted a vaccine mandate for all state healthcare workers. This was followed by former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mandates for workers in NYC in December of the same year. The federal government announced the idea of Covid vaccine mandates in September of 2021, under the Biden administration COVID-19 action plan.

The dates are important because in July of 2021, TrialSite News reported the widely circulated mRNA vaccines lost efficacy against the then spreading Delta variant of Covid. At the time, the Israeli Health Ministry reported that the delta variant cut the Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine’s strength by 64% in preventing infection. It has just been reported that the Israelis weren’t the only government to know there were problems with vaccine efficacy. Apparently, officials in the United States were also aware of the shortcomings of the mRNA jab.

Emails

An article in the Washington Examiner reveals US government officials were aware of “breakthrough cases” of Covid in January of 2021, when the vaccines became widely available. Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show the director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Rochelle Walensky and the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Francis Collins, were discussing the short comings of the Covid vaccine with breakthrough cases but were pushing vaccine mandates at the same time.

Walensky and Collins also included Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) who was also serving as the chief medical advisor to the president. In her emails Walensky says the breakthrough cases are “clearly” an “important area of study”.

Public and Private Statements

In public, however, Walensky issued a different statement. Reportedly, two months after discussing the data with both Fauci and Collins, Walensky said vaccinated people “don’t carry the virus” and “don’t get sick”. Walensky repeated this claim in May of 2021, during a Senate committee hearing claiming fully vaccinated people can’t pass COVID-19 to other people. Unfortunately, for the former head of the CDC, emails now reveal she knew this not to be true.

Mandates Based on Falsehood?

What is disturbing here is the fact that vaccine mandates were pushed, even though the US medical officials in charge knew vaccinated people could contract and spread the virus. People lost jobs over refusal to get the Covid vaccine, and political affiliation was defined by who was vaccinated and who wasn’t. Not to mention those who may have been injured or died due to myocarditis as a result of the Covid vaccine.

The question, of course, is why? The relationship between the US government and big pharma has repeatedly been questioned during the entirety of the pandemic along with the profits made by the pharmaceutical industry. If all of this was, in fact, based on a lie, it’s no wonder the American public has lost faith in the medical industry in the United States.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/a-new-report-claims-us-medical-officials-knew-covid-vaccines-didnt-prevent-the-spread-of-variants-of-the-disease-but-pushed-mandates-anyway-68ad136d

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TrialSite Interviews Medical Justice Minnesota Founder--Seeking to Address Immoral COVID-19 Hospital Protocols

Recently, TrialSite covered the nonprofit advocacy formed based on a growing outrage over what are considered negligent, or even worse protocols for COVID-19 care during the declared national emergency. And the litigation ensues, including a group of Minnesotans now suing local hospital systems called Medical Justice Minnesota. A group formed by a part-time attorney and EMT, experienced firsthand what he and many others consider the outcomes associated with COVID-19 protocols involving remdesivir or procedures such as intubation. Started by Andy Barnhart, the Minnesota-based group seeks to raise charitable contributions, seeking to use such funds to advance legal action that it and others may take on behalf of those injured or killed in Minnesota by pandemic protocols which according to the advocacy group, “Violate the Minnesota Health Care Bill of Rights and generate profits for the wrongdoers.” TrialSite was able to connect with founder Andy Barnhart and learn more about the organization.

What follows is a brief email question and answer so subscribers can learn more about this organization committed to justice for loved ones, including patients and bereaved due to COVID-19 protocols.

How many members are in Medical Justice MN?

As of December 29, 2023, we have 144 members who have reached out to us concerning 84 hospital COVID-19 protocol deaths, the vast majority of which are from Minnesota hospitals.

What COVID-19 protocols does the group believe were most negligent?

We believe that the most negligent aspect of hospital COVID-19 treatment was that it was financially incentivized protocol-driven rather than outcome-driven.

Why do you think these protocols were so off the mark? How did this happen?

We believe the Covid-19 protocols were so off the mark because they drove a financial and administrative wedge between the physician-patient relationship.

How many lawsuits have you filed? Any link to public documents would be greatly appreciated.

We have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Regions Hospital in Saint Paul, MN, on behalf of two widows who each lost their husbands, they believe, due to that hospital’s use of COVID-19 protocols. I do not wish to comment on this case or provide a link to any documents. In 2024 we expect to file additional wrongful death cases against other Minnesota hospitals for their use of COVID-19 protocols including one before the end of January 2024, and another before the end of March 2024 with others to follow.

What are your funding goals?

It is our goal to have all legal fees for these cases paid by Medical Justice MN out of the donations we receive with clients having to pay the legal costs such as filing fees, service of process, expert fees, etc. We are currently bringing in enough donations to allow one attorney and two paralegals to get reimbursed at a discounted rate on a part-time basis.

In order to assess the merit of and take legal action in all the potential Minnesota wrongful death cases we need to raise considerably more money in order to attract more lawyers and paralegals to help. We are a non-profit corporation organized under the laws of Minnesota with a board of directors and officers. We have applied for federal tax-exempt status and our application is pending. Once we receive our exempt status, donations received while our application was pending may be treated as tax-deductible contributions retroactively. However, if our application is not approved, contributions will not be considered tax-deductible.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/trialsite-interviews-medical-justice-minnesota-founder-seeking-to-address-immoral-covid-19-hospital-protocols-1e829d21

Monday, January 01, 2024

MY PICTORIAL HOME PAGE: New edition now up

At the end of every year, I put up a revised version of my pictorial homepge -- with new jokes, new toons and new serious bits. See the latest

Here: https://accessjonjayray.blogspot.com

Backup: http://jonjayray.com/access2023.html

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FDA Commissioner Addresses Life Expectancy Decline

Vaccine toxicity? It's the only obvious cause. Vaccine usage is the big change. You need a big cause to explain a big effect

The decline in Americans’ life expectancy has drawn the attention of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf, who tweeted on X, “We are facing extraordinary headwinds in our public health with a major decline in life expectancy. The major decline in the U.S. is not just a trend. I’d describe it as catastrophic.”

Reversing Course

Two weeks before the tweet, in remarks to the Association of Professors of Medicine, Califf said “blame is toxic,” but the FDA must examine its level of accountability. Califf gave several ways to reverse course.

Califf proposed his agency “create and sustain a post-market evidence generation system” that would evaluate medical products after FDA approval and “teach about the need for participation in evidence generation.” Califf noted clinicians are under financial pressure not to participate.

Another step to increase life expectancy would be to counter medical “misinformation,” Califf said.

“While vaccination is an obvious example, we could go through the list of leading causes of death and disability and find that misinformation is much more pervasive in the lives of susceptible people and communities than valid, reliable scientific information,” said Califf.

Califf also called for expanding the clinical workforce and wider use of artificial intelligence to “lift clinicians out of box-checking hell.”

‘Vaccine Skepticism and Fatigue’

Better alignment of resources with need might also optimize health outcomes, noted Califf.

“And, as we all know, these poor outcomes are far from uniformly distributed,” said Califf. “Disparities as a function of race, ethnicity, wealth, education and geospatial location are profound and widening. A college degree is associated with an 8.5 year longer life and differences of more than a decade in life expectancy are common when we go from urban areas and university towns to rural areas.”

Califf also recommended increased vaccination but did not mention the adverse reactions connected to the COVID-19 shots. Califf noted new vaccines for COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus infections.

“Yet, the combination of vaccine skepticism and fatigue have produced weak vaccination results and parents are seeking exceptions to vaccine requirements for their children in record numbers,” said Califf.

What about Excess Deaths?

Califf does not even pose the obvious question, much less answer it in his remarks, says Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

“The decline in life expectancy is recent and sharp,” said Orient. “Why now? What changed? What are the causes of death? During COVID, there was not a spike in excess deaths. If older, sicker people died of COVID, we should be seeing fewer deaths after the culling effect, not more. Perhaps more fentanyl (overdose deaths), more suicides? How many? Not enough to account for this.”

Califf is ignoring the obvious, wrote Pierre Kory, M.D., and Mary Beth Pfeiffer in The Hill, on December 12. “People are dying in abnormally high numbers even now and long since COVID-19 waned. Yet public health agencies and medical societies are silent,” Kory and Pfeiffer stated.

“Life insurers have been consistently sounding the alarm over these unexpected or, “excess,” deaths, which claimed 158,000 more Americans in the first nine months of 2023 than in the same period in 2019,” wrote Kory and Pfeiffer. “That exceeds America’s combined losses from every war since Vietnam. Congress should urgently work with insurance experts to investigate this troubling trend.”

Dancing Around the Elephant

In researching the increase in excess deaths, researchers should be mindful of the mass COVID vaccination campaign, says Orient.

“Certainly, vaccine status is something you should ask about when collecting all that data,” said Orient. “You’d see a decline in life expectancy if more younger people are dying—as appears to be the case.”

Califf is dancing around an issue that is on most people’s minds, says Orient.

“Which is why they are declining more boosters,” said Orient. “But there may still be delayed effects from earlier shots. There are red-alert levels of safety signals. They are demanding urgent, thorough investigation. Why isn’t Dr. Califf calling for more autopsies, and checking for effects of spike protein or integration of DNA fragments from vaccine production? That a person didn’t go to college is not the reason he died at age 35.”

Evidence-based Medicine

Increasing life expectancy should be a major concern, says Scott Jensen, M.D., a family doctor, and former Minnesota state senator and gubernatorial candidate.

“We see people putting their heads in the sand,” said Jensen. “They don’t want to take blame, but they want to be noble and say it’s catastrophic.”

Jensen says he takes exception to one of Cardiff’s suggestions.

“The phrase ‘evidence-based medicine’ has become similar to ‘follow the science,’ said Jensen. “‘Evidence-based medicine’ is whatever you want it to be. It allows you to pick and choose studies that suit your purpose. But it falls short of the mark. What does it mean and what does it constitute in the practice of medicine?”

The decline in life expectancy should be a primary focus, but the FDA might also examine popular treatments, such as statin drugs, says Jensen.

“There is now data coming out that indicates statin drugs may well be contributing to congestive heart failure,” said Jensen.

FDA’s Image Problem

During the summer, when conservative-leaning media began focusing on excess deaths, the FDA launched a “Rumor Control” webpage to target “the growing spread of rumors, misinformation, and disinformation about science, medicine, and the FDA.”

The problem may go beyond “misinformation,” says Orient.

“The medical establishment has betrayed the people’s trust,” said Orient. “Can they ever get it back?”

https://heartlanddailynews.com/2023/12/fda-commissioner-addresses-life-expectancy-decline

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COVID Mask Mandates Return Across US Hospitals

Hospitals in places across the United States have reimplemented mask mandates because of what officials say is an uptick in COVID-19 and other respiratory infections.

For example, the NYC Health + Hospitals—officially the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation that operates public hospitals and clinics in New York City—announced that mask mandates will be reimplemented at its hospitals.

“Due to an uptick in respiratory illnesses like COVID-19, flu & RSV in our communities & our hospital, we must return to mandatory masking. Please wear a mask when you visit us!” the hospital operator wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, earlier this week.

The post showed a photo of staff members wearing masks.

A separate NYC Health + Hospitals post states that “mandatory masking” was reinstated at its Jacobi facility in the Bronx because of “the prevalence of COVID-19 in our communities.”

While the hospital and other medical facilities have cited recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data showing an increase in COVID-19 cases, historical data from the same agency show that the increase has been relatively small compared to previous years. As of Dec. 16, the agency data show that more than 25,000 people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19 across the United States, whereas on Dec. 16, 2022, more than 36,000 were hospitalized.

Other Mask Mandates

UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, confirmed to local media that it would issue a monthlong mask requirement for its staff, effective on Jan. 2. Patients and visitors won’t be mandated to wear face coverings, however.

“These changes are expected to remain in effect for approximately one month, at which time they will be reevaluated based on current trends,“ a spokesperson for the hospital said in the statement. ”The health and wellbeing of our patients, visitors, and employees is our top priority.”

The Mass General Brigham health system in Massachusetts also announced that it’s reinstating masking requirements because of COVID-19. “Our masking policies are based on the current respiratory illness rates in our communities,” Mass General Brigham confirmed in a statement to local media on Dec. 28.

In Delaware, TidalHealth announced on Dec. 28 that it’s mandating masks for all hospital visitors in patients’ rooms. That rule was initiated in “an effort to protect the most vulnerable of our population from close contact with persons that may be contagious but not yet have symptoms,” according to the hospital.

Thousands of miles across the country, in Washington state, Kaiser Permanente confirmed to local media that staffers who work in person with patients have to wear masks. Kaiser spokeswoman Linnae Riesen told The Spokesman-Review that masks are required for its workers but that patients and visitors aren’t required to wear them.

“Masks are not required but are strongly recommended for patients and visitors who do not have respiratory symptoms and are visiting low-risk areas of our medical facilities,” Kaiser Permanente’s guidance reads, according to the media outlet.

Officials at Beacon Health System said Memorial Hospital and Elkhart General, located in South Bend, Indiana, are reimplementing masking requirements for visitors, patients, and staff, according to local reports. Earlier this month, several hospitals in Pittsburgh, hospitals in Boston, and UW Health hospitals in Illinois and Wisconsin also implemented mask requirements to varying degrees.

Multiple California counties across the Bay Area region had already imposed a mask mandate for staff; it started in November and will run until the end of spring because of a predicted rise in respiratory illnesses.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/covid-mask-mandates-return-across-us-hospitals-5554781

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