The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (No. 35)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (No. 35)
February 11, 2022
*Note to subscribers: I hope to return to writing long-form essays in the near future. In the meantime, please sit back and enjoy “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” and “Dumb and Dumber” for a couple of weeks.
THE GOOD
THE PEOPLE VS. THE RULING ELITE: The great populist revival: Restrictive Covid measures have stirred another wave of anti-establishment revolt.
SWEDEN, THE GREAT “GO-TO” MODEL FOR AMERICAN LEFTISTS, COMMITS THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL: IT ACTS LIKE A BUNCH OF AMERICAN REDNECKS: ‘It’s over:’ Sweden lifts Covid restrictions and ends mass testing.
IS COVID OVER? Sure seems so.
WHAT SOME PEOPLE HAVE KNOWN FOR OVER A YEAR: Mysterious Link Between Vitamin D And COVID-19 Reaffirmed in ‘Striking’ New Findings.
WHAT CAN’T IT DO? I’ve been on an anti-COVID vitamin protocol for over a year now. It seems to be working: Israeli study offers strongest proof yet of vitamin D’s power to fight COVID.
“Israel scientists say they have gathered the most convincing evidence to date that increased vitamin D levels can help COVID-19 patients reduce the risk of serious illness or death. Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels. Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One.”
DON’T YOU THINK IT’S WEIRD THAT THE POLITICIANS MAKE PUBLIC POLICY DECISIONS BASED ON POLLS? But hey, I’ll take it: Polling gets Democrats to finally begin their COVID retreat.
EVERY WORD: (Please watch the embedded video. You won’t regret it.)
HOSERS OF THE WORLD UNITE: Covid Rebellion Brews in Canada, Sending Warning Across Globe
Canadians have done as they were told during the pandemic. They lined up for shots until the country had one of the developed world’s best vaccination rates; they endured some of North America’s longest lockdowns; and they’ve complied with a wide assortment of curfews and quarantines.
But even in a society known for its civility and deference to authority, many are reaching their limit.
Pent-up frustration and rage have burst into the downtown core of the nation’s capital, with hundreds of truckers and other protesters occupying Ottawa’s streets for nearly a week to oppose vaccine mandates. The group has been championed on Fox News and by podcaster Joe Rogan, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump. Demonstrators have started to build makeshift shelters and collect propane tanks, vowing to stay until vaccine mandates are lifted.
The populace may disapprove of their un-Canadian-like antics, but there is a growing sense of support for the main message they’re delivering -- strict Covid restrictions no longer make sense. The protests have been the talk of the nation, around dinner tables, on talk shows and social media. And they serve as a warning shot not just to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau but to leaders everywhere: If even Canada is starting to resist pandemic measures, what does that mean for the rest of the world?
GOOD! ONE DOWN, NINE TO GO (plus the territories): Alberta caves to Canada trucker protests, ends vaccine passports. Asketh and thou shalt receiveth: Truckers win, Trudeau loses: 4 Canadian provinces roll back vaccine mandates
CANADA'S PERESTROIKA MOMENT. This is more than just a “protest.” It’s fast becoming a mass movement for freedom. What the Truckers Want: I’ve spoken to 100 of the protestors gathered in the Canadian capital. What’s happening is far bigger than the vaccine mandates.
I live in downtown Ottawa, within view of Parliament Hill, and have spent the past 10 days or so bundled up and walking around the protests. I have spoken to close to 100 protesters, truckers and other folks, and not one of them sounded like an insurrectionist, white supremacist, racist or misogynist.
They sound like Ivan, 46, who emigrated, with his wife, Tatiana, from Ukraine to build a new life in New Brunswick, in eastern Canada. “We came to Canada to be free—not slaves,” he said. “We lived under communism, and, in Canada, we’re now fighting for our freedom.” (Like so many truckers, Ivan refused to share his last name.)
B.J. Dichter, a spokesman for the Freedom Convoy, is vaccinated, and he estimates that many—maybe most—of the truckers at the protest are, too. “I’m Jewish. I have family in mass graves in Europe. And apparently I’m a white supremacist,” he told me on Wednesday. . . .
So it’s about something else. Or many things: a sense that things will never go back to normal, a sense that they are being ganged up on by the government, the media, Big Tech, Big Pharma. . . .
What’s happening in Canada right now is bigger than the mandates.
The convoy is spearheaded by truckers, but its message of opposition to life under government control has brought onto the icy streets countless, once-voiceless people declaring that they are done being ignored. That the elites—the people who have Zoomed their way through the pandemic—had better start paying attention to the fentanyl overdoses, the suicides, the crime, the despair. Or else.
Kamal Pannu, 33, is a Sikh immigrant and trucker from Montreal. He doesn’t believe in vaccinations; he believes in natural immunity. He had joined the convoy because the Covid restrictions in the surrounding province of Quebec had become too much to bear. He said that he and his wife used to do their grocery shopping at Costco, until the government decreed that the unvaxxed would be barred from big-box stores. Since then, their monthly grocery bill had jumped by $200. “Before,” he said, “we didn’t look at the price of what we were buying. Now, we sometimes put items back because we don’t have that much money.” . . .
A lot of the truckers who had driven in from Vancouver and Winnipeg and Quebec City expressed this same uncertainty. It was getting really expensive to get by: rent, utilities, groceries, everything. Almost everyone who was poor or even middle-class was mired in debt. They told me that they expected this sort of wealth gap in America, but not in Canada.
The divide that already existed between the haves and have-nots largely mapped onto the new chasm between those who supported the mandates and those who did not. And that was creating this huge, weird fracturing everywhere.
AND WHO REMEMBERS THE PERESTROIKA 1.0?
OPPOSE HATE; SPREAD LOVE:
THE BAD
PATHOLOGICAL LIAR. You know Antifa has arrived when the swastikas and confederate flags start appearing: Trudeau accused of fueling anger after claiming anti-vax protesters are ‘waving swastikas’.
IS THIS . . . Justin Trudeau’s Ceauşescu Moment?
CHINA ENVY. Canada morphed into China so slowly that no one noticed. Will little Justin go full CCP and bring in the tanks? Just like Ceauşescu, he’s feeling the pressure from his friends to bring the hammer down. USA TELLS CANADA TO KILL BLOCKADE
OH MY GOOD. This is theft. Sue and sue bigly: GOFUNDME SHUTS DOWN CANADIAN FREEDOM CONVOY ACCOUNT AND SENDS THE MONEY WHERE IT DECIDES.
Over the past weeks, the GoFundMe account supporting the Canadian Freedom Convoy has raised over $9 million from small donors. Today, at the request of the Trudeau dictatorship, that account was shut down. To add injury to insult, GoFundMe has decided to repurpose the donations, sending them to a charity that has the approval of that corporation rather than returning them to the donors. You have to submit an “application” to get your money back.
Related: Glenn Greenwald is on to something important here:
“THE TWO ALTARS; OR, TWO PICTURES IN ONE” (H/T Harriet Beecher Stowe):
ALTAR #1:
ALTAR #2:
SO SAYS THE STATE MEDIA. You should watch this video and determine for yourself what narrative is being created and who is served by that narrative:
BUT WHERE IS ALL THE VIOLENCE THAT THE MEDIA KEEPS TALKING ABOUT:
“TECHNICALLY,” BIG TECH IS NOT CENSORING THESE DOCTORS, BUT IF THESE COMPANIES ARE IN BED WITH THE GOVERNMENT (E.G., RECEIVING SUBSIDIES OR BENEFITTING FROM REGULATIONS) AND WORKING WITH OR AT THE BEHEST OF THE GOVERNMENT, DOES THAT BROADEN THE DEFINITION OF CENSORSHIP? Dozens of physicians censored by Big Tech over COVID 'misinformation'
WAIT, WHAT? World powers pressed omicron discoverer to exaggerate danger
AND THE SCIENCE SAYS . . . INCOMPETENCE, STUPIDITY, OR DISHONESTY: PRETTY SURE IT’S ONE, SOME, OR ALL OF THESE: No Benefit, Many Costs.
THE UGLY
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: Congress Probes NIH for Spending $2.5 Million Injecting Puppies With Cocaine
The National Institutes of Health is facing a bipartisan congressional probe for spending $2.5 million in taxpayer funds on a study that injected beagle puppies with cocaine, according to a copy of the investigation obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), an NIH offshoot, was recently found to have conducted a study in which it "spent roughly $2.5 million of taxpayers' money on cruel tests on six-month-old beagle puppies," according to the investigation by 15 House lawmakers, led by Reps. Nancy Mace (R., S.C.) and Brendan Boyle (D., Pa.). "These tests entailed force-feeding puppies an experimental drug and injecting them with cocaine to study the interaction between the two compounds."
SINCE WHEN DID AMERICA BECOME THIS? Summary of Terrorism Threat to the U.S. Homeland
