I don’t know how important or reliable this is, but Pfizer does have an impressive rap sheet as a corporate criminal, Netanyahu, well…
https://www.unz.com/gatzmon/the-probe-into-the-israeli-vaccine-policy-and-its-outcome-is-beyond-damning/
“In the document the CP (Civilian Probe) points at a government attempt to conceal its dealing with Pfizer. The document states that “the Pfizer-Israel agreement is suffocated with redacted segments, consequently, it is not possible to analyze it legally and/or fully grasp Its implications as far as public health is concerned… This concealment casts a heavy shadow over anyone who took part in the (Israeli/Pfizer) negotiations…”.
…
“On the one hand, the state did not inform the citizens that Pfizer’s vaccine is in experimental stages that have not yet been completed, and that at this stage they are actually taking part in the experiment. On the other hand, the state did not maintain transparent and open control and monitoring systems for the public. As a result, there is a serious concern that this critical and negligent omission stems from: (a) the fear that such disclosure could interfere with the fulfilment of the objectives that may be implied by the Israel-Pfizer agreement or (b) the fear of diminishing demand for the exceptional number of vaccines that were purchased by Israel in advance, and/or (c) the fear of revealing unflattering results of the ‘experiment’ being carried out in Israel.”
…
every world citizen who is concerned about the future of humanity should be alarmed by the CP’s findings and particularly by the desperate and relentless attempts to suppress free academic, scientific and ethical discussion about Covid, the so-called ‘vaccines’ or anything else.”

Posted by: Bluedotterel | Mar 24 2021 17:32 utc | 4

vk @3
Excellent point by vk here. Despite sometimes pretending to myself that I am a Buddhist (I am really good at meditating!), real freedom is being free from need. Abstract and metaphysical “freedoms” are luxuries of the wealthy that few under the thumb of the empire can afford.
I have been surprised by the explosion in the numbers of people locally living in cars and vans lately. I guess from my Buddhist perspective they have been freed from the attachment to a residence. Who could have guessed that capitalism would be such a good teacher of the path to enlightenment?

Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 24 2021 17:47 utc | 6

The US army now teaches social media trolling:
ssi_tunnicliffe-tatham_170421.pdf

Posted by: Paul | Mar 24 2021 17:56 utc | 8

Posted by: maahaa | Mar 24 2021 17:46 utc | 5:
“ I wish I could summon a strong argument against it, but I can find none.”
It is natural for bullshitters to think the world runs on bullshit. In a away, that capsulizes the entire problem that the US’ establishment is having now. They have been relying on bullshit for so long that they think that’s all there is.
The truth is we have no way to know what underlies our “reality”, if anything. We don’t have the tools, the senses, yet. At the limits everything dissolves into probability mush, or the lack of time for anything to get from there to here at the speed of light, or complexity we have no way to impose order on.
If they want to go live in the computer, I say good riddance.

Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 24 2021 17:58 utc | 10

“Posted by: Bluedotterel | Mar 24 2021 16:46 utc | 1” – About Ceaig Murray
And blogger Alexei Navalny continues to blog even if he is in prison.
Why is Julian Assange not allowed to blog?

Posted by: Trond | Mar 24 2021 18:05 utc | 12

@vk
I’ve lost most of my savings in last month on stock market. in the back of my mind I thought the volatility from interest rate fears had something to do with the impossible bind the Fed and US govt are in.
but only with the asiatimes article did it connect the dots for me. china especially is not buying US bonds anymore.hence low demand for it , causing the yields to ride to attract buyers.
worth mentioning also that china goalpost for GDP is unusually conservative this year. one might even say low. lower than countries doing much worse now. it is bracing for headwinds which I thought were mostly domestic. but if it’s not buying bonds as before then it knows the global financial turbulence will be enormous
the fed can’t raise int interest rates or it will tank the stock market. but inflation is real and two more trillion in debt will only expedite it. there is too much US money floating around, too much speculation, volatility, and none of it is going into actual infrastructure and substantive real investment. chickens are coming home to roost. this is decades in the making. this can’t end well.
with all that said I fail to be rationale and pull all my money out. cuz I will never make it back, even at risk of losing more.

Posted by: mastameta | Mar 24 2021 18:18 utc | 14

Hegemon’s gonna hegemon and now it’s cornered and desperate:
1) They kill as many as it takes…they’ve proven it over and over again…atomic bombs, chemical, biological, 911, and endless lies lies lies…
2) Desperate times call for desperate measures…the ace in the hole: mRNA technology. An “operating system” to wreak havoc on the hegemon’s enemies domestic and non-domestic. The gift that keeps on giving…forever and ever and ever…
3) It looks like the vaccinated will be the petri dishes from which the variants arise, but the unvaccinated who will be vilified…sadistically genius…that’s how hegemon rolls
I’m opting out of this sick game myself as long as possible.

Posted by: DaveNItUp | Mar 24 2021 18:21 utc | 16

re that header:Proposals Seek Time To Allow U.S. Face Saving Exit…
Just appeal for human kindness and understanding…to undermine having been caught–out
creating tome to enable more evil intentions to get into play….recall the Geneva “Accords” of 1954 to allow for the next phase of war in Vietnam…the finally ended foreign occupation in 1975.
The reader can recall other instances when that evil use of “kindness and understandtng” led to further ruin and death.

Posted by: chu teh | Mar 24 2021 18:38 utc | 18

@Idiocrates | Mar 24 2021 18:21 utc | 17

Who still thinks this is fact and science based?

A majority of the commenters on this blog say they do. I called it out as insane a year ago and I have seen no evidence to change that conclusion.

Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 24 2021 18:41 utc | 20

China’s human rights report on the US:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1219304.shtml

Posted by: Prof | Mar 24 2021 18:46 utc | 22

Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 24 2021 17:58 utc | 10
Sensible.
—
Why is Julian Assange not allowed to blog?
Posted by: Trond | Mar 24 2021 18:05 utc | 12
different channel, different show.
—
Who still thinks this is fact and science based?
Posted by: Idiocrates | Mar 24 2021 18:21 utc | 17
Who still thinks people ever cared for fact and science? People conform, want to conform, and want to belong. Power du jour throws them rags and bones to cover the nakedness of their submission.
Midnight Express, Turkish prison, a man going clockwise disturbing those who go counter clockwise who try to make him change direction.
That is all you need to know. PTB have known this at least since the advent of mass communication.

Posted by: a-non | Mar 24 2021 18:52 utc | 24

@25 everything always makes sense in retrospect. esp since it’s a structural problem that is longstanding. what’s hard is knowing the timing. as is oft said bankruptcy happens slowly until it is sudden. I still can’t believe or fathom collapse is imminent even tho I know it’s inevitable within next decade timeframe.

Posted by: mastameta | Mar 24 2021 19:02 utc | 26

The vast majority of humans are completely delusional due to their irrational, laughably idiotic belief in magic sky people and post-death fantasies.
Every Christian, Jew, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and yes Buddhist is a fucking moron. And any pontificating they do about “conspiracy theories” or “disinformation” should be ignored, of if not ignored–instead heavily mocked.
Why should any rational person pay any attention to theists–who are clinically insane? Hearing opinions of theists is little different than hearing opinions of the local homeless schizophrenic with his tin-foil hat. No relation to reality.

Posted by: Hippo Dave | Mar 24 2021 19:19 utc | 28

“How thoughtless of me. I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals.” -Cecily, the importance of being earnest.
of course a pinko commie irish pervert would say stuff like that, wouldn’t he?

Posted by: jason | Mar 24 2021 19:36 utc | 30

@13/@29
It is clear to me, we are all a simulation running on an iPhone 2001 in some galactic garbage heap. Alien toddler got bored… the end is when that battery runs out.

Posted by: MapleLeaf | Mar 24 2021 19:38 utc | 32

small sample but… evidence that people still get infected after 2nd jab (14 days+)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mc3PCKyHe8&ab_channel=IHUM%C3%A9diterran%C3%A9e-Infection

Posted by: Mina | Mar 24 2021 19:43 utc | 34

MapleLeaf @32
I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the world.

Posted by: William Gruff | Mar 24 2021 19:57 utc | 36

Mr. JB
How do you account for the dead all over the world?

Posted by: fyi | Mar 24 2021 20:15 utc | 38

About Category Management
@ fyi
In response to your post of March 24, 2021.
I am forced to note your voluntary intellectual limitation. In French we say that
“vous avez choisi vos œillères” you have chosen your blinkers.
Good luck and good health. But don’t try to force us to reduce our own vision. We want to be human beans not draught horses.
Not all Palestinians are Muslims and even the Jews who were present before 1918 suffered from Zionism. Not all those who support the European colonization of Palestine are Judeo-Christian. Most of them are rather atheistic. But some are also Muslims!
By the way, this “Judeo-Christian category” does not exist, just a fig leaf sometimes useful for non-semitic Zionists. And to fuel back wars on People.
You should go and pray in Al-Quds/Jerusalem. You will have an incredible choice of mosques, churches and synagogues to suit you. And you will come across human beings of almost all your categories.
Some are angels, others demons.
The worst of them are not even really Zionists and certainly not even believers, just double or triple nationality dominants who come to relieve their arrogance and aggression on the dominated.
Those who manipulate our emotions and instinctive reactions to provoke more aggression and direct it towards targeted populations are among the most dangerous demons.
Professor Laborit has explained these behaviours very well in a film that I recommend to everyone. Really a GREAT film everyone MUST see and have.

Laborit expose his ideas on four main types of animal behaviour, grounded respectively in consumption, escape, struggle, and inhibition. The lives of the three fictional characters intersect at various points (Jean in an affair with Janine, René negotiating with Janine about the future of his job) and each of them faces moments of critical life-changing decision. At these moments they are seen as self-identifying with the image of a popular star in French cinema (Jean with Danielle Darrieux, Janine with Jean Marais, and René with Jean Gabin).
Laborit comments on the conflicts arising from pursuit of dominance among individuals and defensive reactions to it, and reflects on the need for better understanding of the human brain.

https://www.amazon.com/American-Uncle-DVD-Alain-Resnais/dp/B000S6UZTC?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_marketplace
https://www.netflix.com/title/60002008?preventIntent=true&locale=en-FR
As a gift, a little bit more about Alain Resnais https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/alain-resnais-short-films

Posted by: Bernard F. | Mar 24 2021 20:49 utc | 40

A much shorter comment here (the previous one was so long because it was about nonsense, which seems to take so much more time to talk about than sense.)
Another issue with the international program of cooperation by compromise and consensus is that the main proponents have ignored that consensus is not an effective means of governance. It is not stable, it is rigid, static, merely covers up underlying changes and breaks. That’s why neither Putin nor Xi operates their own countries by the principles that are supposed to guide the world. A democratic and rational society operates by majority rule. How could the world order be any different. Historically the world of nations is anarchy, without any ruler of any kind save some temporary and local despotisms.
Further, like states’ rights proponents in the US, how is it even a good thing in principle to claim that nations should have more rights than people?

Posted by: steven t johnson | Mar 24 2021 21:05 utc | 42

vk @ 3
In other words, freedom from need is true freedom
Um, being free from need would mean being dead. Maybe you mean freedom from desire?
Like, nothing is all I want?
Or, can I at least keep my internet connection?

Posted by: John | Mar 24 2021 21:10 utc | 44

The chinese get it
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1219371.shtml

Lü Xiang, an expert on US politics and diplomacy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Wednesday that NATO is actually dominated by the US, so Stoltenberg could not be regarded as a representative of Europe, but an American proxy in Europe.

Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 24 2021 21:19 utc | 46

On the simulation scam, it is basically a secularized version of Berkeley, who posited the non-existence of matter, saying that God implanted the experience of the world directly into the soul. I think he got the idea from a remark of Descartes about a demon who deceived everyone about the existence of the world, sending them delusions. I suppose Berkeley “knew” that the devil couldn’t be creative, that only God could make something as wonderful as Bishop Berkeley. Berkeley may have had the prophetic revelation direct from God (all believers in the end claim superior knowledge because they are holier, enlightened by God,) but to me it seems Berkerely ended up saying he was a figment of God’s imagination. Solipsists who pretend to claim each one has imagined the world I think are actually saying they are figments of my imagination, which conveniently justifies ignoring solipsists, doesn’t it?
Although the simulation idea may just be old wine in a new bottle, being old is not exactly a refutation. The first issues is, is there any reason to think so. It is amazing how often this is forgotten. It’s Bertrand Russell’s teapot. He pointed out as I understand it he could “hypothesize” a teapot orbiting Saturn. But this is not really a hypothesis because there’s no reason to think such a thing. Having no reason is irrational, by definition. Amazingly enough, the irrationality of making things up without a reason is not admitted to be irrational. (No, fiction is rational because it’s for entertainment, entertainment being so broad to incorporate edifying sermons and pornography. And another by the way, irrational hypotheses like ESP or astrology can be falsified, so any philosophy and practice of science pinned on falsification is ultimately wrong.)
Another aspect of this overlooked, is that an undefined hypothesis is not even an idea. (Descartes insistence on clear and distinct ideas was driving at this, I think.) Thus if you say, “simulation,” you aren’t really saying anything until you have details. There’s the how, first of all. That’s why people are so reluctant to admit “theories” that lack causes. At the very least, they insist on very detailed regularities in the seemingly uncaused events. Even quantum mechanics rests its claims on the math and the predictions of experimental outcomes. The simulation hypothesis has nothing but an undefined technology. There are perfectly determinate phenomena which cannot be predicted. No simulation can predict the weather. The famous butterfly effect shows that even though every single event in the formation of any given weather faithfully obeys natural laws, with every step in principle measurable, the consequences of the tiniest differences will prevent an accurate simulation. Any universal simulation that includes weather would have to have some sort of continual inputs to reset. Yes, simulating a hurricane would be like using a weather machine and other effects in a movie. But not even in principle is it possible to know which butterfly flapped its wings in Brazil. Yet the simulation hypothesis
How do you simulate the distribution of galaxies? For a start you would have to know all the laws of nature even to confront the problem of chaotic phenomena. We don’t know for certain that it’s possible to find them out. It is highly likely they have to be self-consistent, thus in principle amenable to reason. But the universe, the distribution of galaxies, isn’t just a bunch of equations, it’s a history. History does have unknowable things, because the evidence is gone. Indeed, being historical is a reason for doing simulations, like cosmologists modeling the formation of galaxies. Those who deny there is any science of man would have no problem in thinking an arbitrary program can write a history. But like it or not, the evidence shows that even history, humanity’s existence, is a material phenomenon with its own dynamics. Not only are celestial dynamics still uncertain as dark matter, so are social dynamics. How do we know they can be sufficiently resolved to program a simulation?
Even more to the point, even if some hypothesized superior civilization had the laws of nature and society down, and had some sort of mechanism for resetting the simulation to allow for the accumulated errors of chaotic phenomena like weather, are the calculations computable? How long will they take? Is the data base, or parameters, or the input, small enough to be created and stored in computer memory?
Also, it is entirely unclear what it means to simulate dreams. This is a problem for all solipsistic theories or variations of them like Berekeley’s. Or hallucinations from exhaustion or hunger or something neurological. Even worse, given the uncertainties of memory and the fallibility of the human mind, how do you simulate consciousness? Is the computer merely resetting us when we wake up? Is that why we sleep, to allow the computer to fix errors? The universe simulator would be like the computer in the Stargate SG-1 series episode “Revisions.” We just think we remember but we just “remember” what they computer puts in our memory. Indeed, in what sense is the sense of self a true metaphysical entity. We don’t remember being a baby. Some philosophers deny a true continuity to the ego (not so much in the European tradition but a strand in Asian philosophy.)
I don’t think the simulation hypothesis is rational at all. The superficial appeal of doing away with supernaturally powered fake universe by vaguely invoking something seemingly natural, science-y rather than scientific, adds problems, rather than resolving any, making it even less likely, Namely, why are these people doing this? What do they have to gain? It’s worse than Westworld!

Posted by: steven t johnson | Mar 24 2021 21:26 utc | 48

John @44–
It’s freedom from Want. The Four Freedoms as articulated by FDR in 1941 were:
1.Freedom of speech
2.Freedom of worship
3.Freedom from want
4.Freedom from fear
Earlier this year on the 80th anniversary of FDR’s speech, I wrote a series of comments on the topic. They remain the four main tasks needing to be accomplished for the Common Man to be genuinely free. At the time, they were to be the main goals of WW2; goals that were further articulated by Henry Wallace in 1942 & ’43 in his speeches and writings. Currently, several nations have accomplished those four goals; none of them is a NATO/Neoliberal nation however.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 24 2021 21:30 utc | 50

Posted by: steven t johnson | Mar 24 2021 21:26 utc | 48
Another thing – Say you’ve got someone telling you that human existence is a simulation. A simulation of what? If human existence is a (necessarily) imperfect simulation of actual human existence, then what’s the perfect/real version? Would it be mankind before Adam took a bite from the apple?
BTW, “simulations” or models can predict the weather, just not always very accurately. As computing power increases and more variables are available to the equations/algorithms, especially real-time inputs, I think that simulating the weather will get a lot more accurate in the future.

Posted by: _K_C_ | Mar 24 2021 21:45 utc | 52

@vk and al.
About freedom
In order to be “FREE” man need to be FREE from material need,
“c’est pas faux” / It’s not wrong….
But “material” need is a little more than material. What’s about psychologie [for exemple Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a simplified version]
I just post
Posted by: Bernard F. | Mar 24 2021 20:49 utc | 40
The movie “mon oncle d’Amérique” is the best approach for me.

According to Laborit, behavior is regulated by four elements: consumption (drinking, eating and copulating), gratification, punishment (with the outcome of fighting or fleeing) and finally inhibition of action. He takes up Paul D. MacLean’s theory of the three levels of the brain (or “triunic brain”) :
a reptilian brain, common to the entire animal kingdom, which ensures our survival reflexes and directs our consumer behaviour;
a second “brain”, the limbic brain, common to all mammals, that of memory, which guides our rewarding behavior: it makes us flee the painful experiences we have known (Sorched cat fears cold water) and act to seek pleasure. If all exits are blocked, inhibition of action causes stress and causes disease;
our third “brain”, the neocortex, which is more developed in the human species, allows us to combine ideas from different, more abstract experiences.
Unfortunately, it often serves us only to make a speech that justifies our first two behaviours. The neocortex should allow us to understand that these first two brains only establish behaviours of domination between men.
Now man is made only by his contact with other men. Not being aware that we must at least channel the instincts of domination (since we cannot eliminate them) can only lead to individual and collective unhappiness.
Thus, according to Laborit, who concludes the film, knowing these mechanisms would certainly not eliminate them, but at least use them to do something else, just as the patient study of the laws of motion did not eliminate gravity at all, but nevertheless allowed us to go to the Moon!
Contrary to what is generally accepted: “the brain is not the centre of thought but the centre of action.”

Posted by: Bernard F. | Mar 24 2021 21:54 utc | 54

The EUP is cutting its own throat trying to bully China. I see the move was made as soon as Blinken arrived and began spreading lies about both Russia and China. I know China and Russia would like these rogue nations to uphold their honor by obeying the UN Charter, but it seems too many have caught the Outlaw US Empire’s disease and now want to return to their Colonial ways. If the EUP ends up trashing the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with China, many individual European nations are going to be very angry. China won’t mind if that’s what the EUP does as is explained here:
“After China announced sanctions on 10 individuals and four entities from the EU as a countermove to EU’s unilateral sanctions against China, some people from the EU reacted strongly, claiming China’s countermeasures were “unacceptable.” The European Parliament canceled a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with China. Some members of the European Parliament warned that the lifting of Chinese sanctions should be a condition to promote talks on CAI. Voices that support to block the agreement in an attempt to punish China have been hyped by some anti-China forces.
“Yet those forces should be told that the CAI between China and the EU is mutually beneficial, rather than a gift from the EU to China. If the European Parliament wants to obstruct the deal, taking it as a bargaining chip in interactions with China, it should first reach a consensus among European countries. If they all agree, let’s just take it as negotiations between China and the EU never took place last year. But don’t blackmail China with the case. China despises such ugly deeds.”
China’s saying essentially that it will forego the benefits of trade if it isn’t properly respected and doesn’t care if the EU’s dire economic condition worsens because it can’t stand up for itself in the face of the world’s #1 Bully, which is exactly the same line Russia has taken.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 24 2021 22:11 utc | 56

@vk,bevin and al.
about simplified capitalism

One of the fundamentals of capitalism was to deprive people of their ability to subsiste, in order to make them work for a capitalist

But in order to make them work, you need…. workplace. And so, how does that begin? In fact, at the same time, agricultural and industrial technics improve. The agricultural production need less people, “don’t pay anymore for a leaving” and some former farmer looking for their basics need (again), turn to industrial workers.

the enclosure of not only the pastures and arable land but also of “wastes” and common land was justified on the basis that it led to higher crop yields.

YES
Not a plot. Improvement.
As Ford made Ford T affordable.
As strong anticapitalists should we really fight for the return to the hoe, the scythe and the beater?

Posted by: Bernard F. | Mar 24 2021 22:30 utc | 58

@3 vk – – “the nihilist bullshittery from the Buddhists”
I enjoyed your whole post and especially the last part about Marx’s idea of freedom as being measurable by freedom from material want – a huge concept, that I thank you for.
Your last paragraph was unfortunate, and I quoted above what I’m responding to. This comment of yours is actually a nihilistic view, your characteristic projected onto a thing as its nature, rather than truly describing the nature of that thing.
So I will tell you a thing, so that you will have the opportunity to hear it. What you do with that opportunity is your choice alone, and I have no wish or desire to hear any response from you on this one thing.
~~
Buddhism is very famously known as the “Middle Way”. What then is it in the middle of?
Buddhism postulates two extremes of belief regarding the absolute nature of things: one is nihilism, the view that nothing exists beyond the universe, devoid of absolute meaning; the other extreme of view is eternalism (some might call it Creationism), which believes in an enduring force of volition that comprises the universe.
The view taught by Buddha is different from both these extremes. Unfortunately, I don’t feel qualified to tell anyone what Buddhism is. But I do feel able to say what it is not, and it is not either of those extremes as I described them.
What lies in that middle ground, and constitutes the Middle Way, is a path that can be embarked upon, and experienced, and vetted by personal experience, each for oneself, to one’s uttermost rigor, providing results promised by the teachings of the path, without fail.
~~
I offer this to you, just so you have an opportunity to know, in case you wish to explore.

Posted by: Grieved | Mar 24 2021 22:53 utc | 60

karlof1 @Mar24 22:49 #59

[China Human Rights Report:] “The epidemic went out of control and turned into a human tragedy due to the US government’s reckless responses….

I’ve gone further and actually voiced my suspicion that US/Western response to the pandemic was deliberately wrong.
Just as the Obama Administration made a “wilful choice” to support the rise of ISIS, we can surmise that the Trump Administration made the wilful choice to allow the pandemic to spread.
Why would the do so?

• Help to fund Trump’s military build-up (by saving money on the care and upkeep of the elderly);
• Incite anger toward China;
• Test mRNA bio-warfare technology.

This is scary stuff with grave implications – but NO ONE appears willing to consider that EMPIRE priorities are driving policy.
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 24 2021 23:36 utc | 62

Reply to : fyi | Mar 24 2021 20:15 utc | 38
I am not a Mr. but a Miss. I am not a doctor. I urge you to watch the testimony I provided a link to, and to hear a doctor, who treats Covid-19 patients, explain why so many people died, unnecessarily. His testimony is clear on all points.
You do not need to be a doctor to ask yourself (for example I did, very early into the spread of the virus) why is there almost no mention of treatment.
There was more discussion in this group about possible treatment than in the public domain and all the corporate media put together. In fact, it was blocked, as the doctor states in his testimony. From May (2020)onwards vaccines were the only show in town.
Not being a doctor, just an ordinary human trying to use my brain for what it is for, I found that very odd.And here we are, staring into a potential catastrophe of enormous proprotions. Listen to the doctor, and to all those other doctors and scientists (even policemen, believe it or not) whose voices are being silenced and ignored.

Posted by: JB | Mar 24 2021 23:47 utc | 64

Being a simple bloke I see much of this thread as a panoply of different ways to make the same error, that despite the wide range of philosophies being espoused and attacked, all of them suffer from the same problem.
They all regard humans as being something special, unique. The carmaker dingbat convinced he is living in a computer simulation suffers from the same delusion as the ninnies who promote all the ancient ‘god’ superstitions. Why would some entity bother to create a simulation centred on humans, why would some omniscient, omnipotent being go to all the trouble of making a universe for humans, some even have the gall to claim this super being created humans in his/her image WTF! Basic anatomy tells us that a truly omnipotent being wouldn’t require anything like a human body shape.
Humans are just one species of an infinite variety, out of a vast spectrum of sentient beings that probability informs us exist across this reality/universe – whatever people choose to see it as.
The notion that we humans, a badly evolved and self destructive species living in a tiny corner of a huge universe are somehow special is ludicrous – fucking laughable.
I get why so many of us spend their lives considering us, that’s all we’ve got but to try and escalate human issues to being of some great importance for the entire universe is irrational & totally unsustainable.
Simulation garbage, like the silly belief that aliens would want to study us is just one more step in the ridiculous path of anthropocentrism that so many humans are indoctrinated into.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 24 2021 23:53 utc | 66

Miss JB
The thesis implies that the approximately 65,000 dead Iranian are due to medical ignorance by Iranian medical staff.
Being familiar with the efforts of the medical personnel, and that they tried every thing and watching patients die, I do not consider your insinuations credible.
Iranian nurses and doctors did not drop the ball. I am not going to credit youtube videoes filled with assertions. The Dead have rebutted them.

Posted by: Fyi | Mar 24 2021 23:58 utc | 68

Piotr Berman@65 misunderstands the simulation claim, I think. The stance is that “we” are subroutines in the simulation, subroutines whose apparent consciousness is an illusion prompted by input from the parallel processing of the simulation of the natural world and of other subroutines simulating other beings. Or to put it another way, Elon Musk is claiming to be a figment of a computer’s imagination. It is tempting to agree with him. Musk would be a better person if considered an “isomorph” from the movie Tron: Legacy, wouldn’t he?
_K_C_@48 is correct on the first point for some versions of the simulation scheme. But in some versions “we” are the simulated outcomes of a model of the universe, carried on the basis of some unknown physical laws and unknown parameters put into the model, that simulated first the evolution of the physical universe and then the evolution of the planet Earth and then the evolution of life and then the evolution of humanity and then the simulated history of humanity. Simulating the development of the mind from infancy would be a breeze. But I don’t think this kind of vague handwaving even constitutes a rational explanation.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Mar 25 2021 0:22 utc | 70

@Posted by: JB | Mar 24 2021 23:47 utc | 64
….why is there almost no mention of treatment.
There were mentions of treatments, just not in the US. I don’t know about whether the same has been in Europe, but in China very early on during the pandemic, various treatments were tried and discussed. China drew on its experience of fighting SARS, and their findings were actually published, such as in Lancet. I believe Italy consequently made routine use of one of the method, that of serum from recovered patients (and later in the US too) on patients in critical care units, which was first tried and endorsed in China. Serum wasn’t a panacea but in most cases found helpful. However, in China itself the popular treatment was a combination of traditional western medicine for pneumonia and traditional Chinese herbal medicine for respiratory ailments. The findings were conveyed to countries that China assisted early on, such as Italy and Serbia. Chinese herbal medicine was also included in aid packages that were sent oversea to stranded Chinese expats. China also discussed at length the use of remdesivir, and dismissed it as being ineffective.
Actually there were discussions of treatments in the US too, if you recall Ole Pres Trump urged the drinking of Dittol, Lysol, and other germ killers. I didn’t recall him urging the use of injection method, but like always there are daredevils in the US that went that far 🙂

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Mar 25 2021 1:00 utc | 72

@Norwegian | Mar 24 2021 21:19 utc | 46
It is not just Jens Quisling, half (or more) of the European political elite are USA proxies.
Take for example the European green parties.
I am pretty sure that the Dutch green party is at its core a NATO/military intelligence operation. It was created as a merger of three parties, all of whom had a distinct pacifist and socialist signature. The new party, GroenLinks (“GreenLeft”) has forgotten all of that and has limited itself to churning out Big Climate slogans. The party leader is an obviously hollow puppet in the image of Justin Trudeau. His opinions are handed to him by advisors in the shade.
A few years ago, an MP for GroenLinks, Mariko Peters was enthousiastically promoting more military missions in Afghanistan. She was also a board member of the “Atlantische Commissie”, the local Dutch chapter of the Atlantic Treaty Organisation (the USA chapter is the more well-known Atlantic Council). If you study her antics and associations more closely, it is pretty obvious that there is nothing green or left about this lady and that she is an obvious atlanticist diplomat/spy type.
Currently, there are no political parties in the Netherlands that are critical of NATO. This used to be very different not even a very long time ago.
About the German green party I know a bit less, but I trust well-informed members of the CDU when they point out the NATO dirt on Die Grüne:
Green Party is an ‘arm of the US elites’ & doesn’t care about German interests – Merkel’s ally to RT
What the article does not mention is the association, reputedly for a six-figure salary) of former Grüne luminary Joschka Fisher to the Nabucco pipeline project (competing with ns2). Fischer is also a member of the council on foreign relations and a founding member even of the European chapter ECFR.

Posted by: Lurk | Mar 25 2021 1:33 utc | 74

karlof1 @Mar25 1:16 #73
My apologies.
I was painting with too broad a stroke when I said “NO ONE” was willing to consider that Empire priorities are driving policy. There are good people trying to make others aware so as to prevent disaster. You are one of them.
Sadly, there are still too many that accept media manipulation and too few that understand the danger of an Empire hell-bent on global domination.
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 25 2021 1:54 utc | 76

JB #37

Just listen to this doctor’s testimony in the Texas legislature on TREATMENT of Covid-19:
See this link
Just one quote: “COVID – 19 has always been a treatable sickness”

Well said and thank you. My government posts a pathetic thing entitled “Covid 19 Vaccination and treatment” and there is ZERO information on early stage treatment. It is all vaccine, vaccine, vaccine.
When I next visit my GP I will ask her for details of her treatment regime should I ever receive a +ve test but I suspect what the answer will be.
Every disease is treatable to some extent. I have the Chinese Covid treatment manual of considerable volume, fully translated to english. Here is version 7 March 2020 and it is no doubt thoroughly revised since that date.
The almost total surrender of professionals in medical practice to self censorship and the brutal insistence on toeing the line to the official mantra is religious obscurantism of the worst order. It is the totalitarian stuff that led to the witch hunts and fatwas and the excommunications and now the cancel culture.
The advocates of this oppression of clinical practice are the enemies of humanity and the saboteurs of science.
That brief video is well worth considering as it demands an answer as to why this path of death causing ignorance was ever advocated let alone accepted. Let a thousand flowers bloom and a thousand ideas be considered.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 25 2021 2:58 utc | 78

Jackrabbit @ 62 opined;
“This is scary stuff with grave implications – but NO ONE appears willing to consider that EMPIRE priorities are driving policy.”
On the contrary rabbit, many perceive it, but are unwilling to say it..
bevin @ 66 said; “The notion that we humans, a badly evolved and self destructive species living in a tiny corner of a huge universe are somehow special is ludicrous – fucking laughable.”
Yep. But, just another page from the book of deception, that the U$A is the “exceptional” nation in the world…

Posted by: vetinLA | Mar 25 2021 4:28 utc | 80

@Lurk | Mar 25 2021 1:33 utc | 74
Thank you for the information and links! I agree totally with your assessment. I believe that most of what is happening in western Europe must be understood in this context. The “green” parties and similar organisations represent disguised military operations directed at the peoples of Europe. Their goal is to impoverish the countries and extract their wealth, plus isolate them from powers like Russia and China. The EU and NATO are two sides of a coin working for the same masters. They must both be dissolved and the fake “green” policies must end. Of course the pandemic that isn’t is another tool in the playbook that aims to take away our freedom and independence.

Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 25 2021 6:38 utc | 82

Norwegian #83
Thank you.
I trust people will revive their awareness of the joy and permissive exuberance that comes with freedom. They have in the past. I never tire of saying to people “the land of your hatred is full of people like you and me and all we wish for is happiness and sufficiency” and I find that triggers a more gentle exploration of our dialogue.
I have heard it said that there are two ‘types’ of people in the world – the makers and builders vs the users and destroyers. I am not sure it is at all that simple and I find it really helpful to use the Fran Peavey method of ‘strategic questioning’ to assist the lost ones to explore their recovery or inspiration.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 25 2021 8:27 utc | 84

Boulder shooter swore allegiance to ISIS, targeted ‘Jewish store’ Report: Boulder shooter swore allegiance to ISIS, targeted ‘Jewish store’
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/299160
Beer sample tests positive for COVID-19
https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=D61l_1616458185
Biden Appointee’s Troubling Views On The First Amendment
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/a-biden-appointees-troubling-views

Posted by: Dogon Priest | Mar 25 2021 8:28 utc | 86

Freedom is a beautiful thing, like belief and love. Totally excellent feelings, totally subjective and in my opinion totally exaggerated in relation to reality.
Sure, worth musing philosophically about, but even a (good) *definition* of freedom changes NOTHING in my opinion. The reason I think this is that a good definition must necessarily be VERY abstract and generic. Thus it loses its relation to reality…just my $.02.

Posted by: Idiocrates | Mar 25 2021 8:45 utc | 88

You know the USA is in trouble when Rupert Murdoch is considered the last press baron between ‘honest reporting’ and the dictatorship of the Democrat press machinery. Strategic Culture reports from Robert Bridge “A prominent DC circuit judge has delivered a scathing attack on the Democratic Party’s “ideological control” of the U.S. media landscape. Yet who will heed the call if legacy and social media are empowered to suppress news and debate at will?”

“Two of the three most influential papers (at least historically), The New York Times and The Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,” the right-leaning judge declared. “And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction. The orientation of these three papers is followed by The Associated Press and most large papers across the country (such as the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Boston Globe).”
“Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet,” he added.
Silberman then made passing reference to Rupert Murdoch, 90, who owns that boney strip of media byproduct that speaks on behalf of conservative values, namely Fox News, The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. Amid ongoing efforts by the masters of the media universe to silence even this last bastion of Republican thought, the judge warned, “[I]t should be sobering for those concerned about news bias that these institutions are controlled by a single man and his son [James Murdoch]. Will a lone holdout remain in what is otherwise a frighteningly orthodox media culture?”

I can assure any one left in the bar that if Rupert Murdoch is the only person between you and press freedom then you can be sure he will sell the power of that position to the highest oligarch bidder as long as he can remain in that same place to sell it again a year or so later.
Rupert is that sort of guy. But he will run a few editorials to make you feel good about it.
Yet this is an interesting judgement as it flips an old form of immunity sheltering malfeasance in reporting: “Silberman took umbrage against the 1964 court case New York Times v. Sullivan, which made it incumbent upon those parties looking to sue media outlets to prove that the latter’s reporting was the result of “actual malice,” or a “reckless disregard for the truth.” That ruling, critics say, has made it exceedingly difficult to hold media outlets accountable for what Trump regularly denounced as “fake news.”
Yes, well there is fake news and limp, uninvestigated news and uncritically reported news and so on but this decision could awaken the kraken in the media pond.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 25 2021 9:21 utc | 90

Did anyone mention Blinken in Brussels talking to Nato yesterday (against China… against Nord Stream…)? just a day before a EU summit, but it must be chance.

Posted by: Mina | Mar 25 2021 9:47 utc | 92

Posted by: Mina | Mar 25 2021 9:47 utc | 92
Blinken is smart enough to know he is not being received well. As an experienced career bureaucrat, I expect he will be very busy now, trying to recover.

Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 25 2021 10:35 utc | 94

Mina #92
I would have thought Europe was heartily sick of the USA and its ridiculous posturing after all these years of being an occupied state. But then I guess the europeans are just as gullible and ill informed as the Usastan people are.
Blinken was the driving force behind Hillary and the debacle in Syria and Libya and I cannot see the european political structure taking him seriously. Sigh, I can only hope he vomits on Merkel or Micron or Ursula von de Leyen and they take it badly.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 25 2021 10:42 utc | 96

It does not seem to me they expressed any critic
https://www.dw.com/en/blinken-seeks-to-revitalize-nato-alliance/a-56957728
“Blinken is set to meet 29 foreign ministers from the NATO alliance countries during the two-day meeting as part of a European visit seeking to revamp trans-Atlantic relations under US President Joe Biden.”
i.e. the Blinken meeting with all the NATO states foreign ministers took place just before the EU summit today.. enough for the respective FM to brief their associate lackeys in the various governments.

Posted by: Mina | Mar 25 2021 11:47 utc | 98

Idiocrates. @ 17
Who still thinks this is fact and science based
The decumbent, those who are receptive to anecdotal evidence and superstition, those who believe that getting covid is riskier than climbing Mount Everest, those who don’t know that goats and mangoes can test positive as well. Those who just can’t seem to fathom that death by covid is insignificant next to the death and attrition caused by an inhuman response to it. Those who feel freedom by wearing a ridiculous piece of cloth over their blowholes, and who anticipate salvation from an inadequately tested gene therapy treatment whose prototypes killed its animal trial subjects.

Posted by: john | Mar 25 2021 11:52 utc | 100