It’s fascinating. (The Troubles generally are fascinating; civil wars where everybody knows everybody else run nasty. And if you don’t think humans have all the willpower they need to quit drugs on their own, go read Ten Men Dead, about the hunger strikers at Long Kesh prison.)
Make sure you get to then end. The last paragraph might as well be the Team Reality motto.
I would love to hear people's stories of how they tried to talk to liberals in real life about why they are skeptical of the covid vaccine and the responses they got. People don't have the balls to shame people in real life the way they do online, and it's quite obvious talking to someone in real life just how much they understand and how much shit they regurgitate from CNN
Here is one of the most effective videos about how horrible vaccines really are – a study of vaccinated vs unvaccinated children – clocking in at only 6 minutes:
I'm fumbling around with an idea of what I've named The Tyranny of the Immortalists.
I see so many people--truly obsessive--about diet and exercise and no chemicals in the house and special plastic bottles with no XYZ chemicals....and then they're slathering their kids in sunscreen (SPF 1,874), wrapping their kids in bubble-wrap and become apoplectic if the kid eats one Hershey bar.
AND then, wearing six masks, they're the first ones in line for an untested "vaccine" and scolding anyone who doesn't hold these same beliefs, and demanding unquestioning obedience because their kids' lives are supposedly in danger.
OK. Look: I agree: there's a whole lot of garbage Out There. And too many chemicals. And way too much poison in our food. But...
SOMETIMES YOU'RE GOING TO GET SICK ANYWAY.
And SOMEDAY WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.
In the meantime, you can eat a sensible diet, be faithful to a reasonable amount of exercise, and don't bathe in Round-Up, then you can sometimes indulge in a Hershey bar or even the occasional handful of Cheetos. Red meat isn't bad for you--and red meat is why we have the variety of teeth in our mouths.
If you take a rational approach to a basic, sensible--and even pleasant--lifestyle, your immune system is an impressive part of your body. You don't need a pill or an injection every time you get a hangnail--even for a hangnail developed in a lab in China and financed by your tax dollars.
The same finger-wagging obsessives who want to make decisions for everyone are going to end up DEAD....just like everyone else.
I was on a Disney board today that my family and I used to enjoy. We are doing our best to move people away from spending money at Disney. Anyway, I've had to read all these idiots talk about how they are going to go, but still wear their mask. They are all worried people are going to look at them funny or that someone might say something to them. Really... We spent 2 years being yelled at by these same fools and now I'm not supposed to make fun of you for not being an adult and giving your worthless piece of face diaper that's nothing more than a superiority symbol in your mind or a security blanket at best? Please... Anyway my post was deleted.
I said, "There is a reason we take away our children's security blankets and pacifiers from them at a certain age. It's just down right embarrassing that they still have them. LOL
The site moderator called that comment "a mild personal attack" and deleted the post! LOL
My point is, these people need to be called out for their foolishness and be shamed for their stupidity and ignorance! I'll never understand why folks get mad at the truth tellers and defend the lying POS! Make zero sense!
It’s always been this way but it’s a case of magnitude now.
For instance, they demonized Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling as a quack for asserting that Vitamin C could extend survival in terminal inoperable cancers. The way that was done was by rigging new trials that administered C differently than the trials conducted by Pauling and Cameron: https://themariachiyears.substack.com/p/modern-ignorance-and-ancient-wisdom-8c1?s=w
As a journalist covering corona, I think you may find those historical examples interesting because they lend insight into the current debacle.
It does come back to journalistic integrity and critical thinking skills, but as the Sloan Kettering debacle shows (as I detail in my second piece above), they will fire journalists and science writers with integrity if they threaten institutional narrative or moneyed interests.
I'm hopeful that the present crisis is creating a critical mass of people that will lead to some sort of Kuhnian revolution in the health sciences — although I know that there is much more that is also going on in the world, socially and economically, that also intersects with corona, and we are seeing corruption and incompetence across the board.
At least we have the internet to thank. Although they are trying hard, the internet revolution makes it a bit more difficult to throttle the truth now. That’s why trust it at all-time lows. In the past it would have been easier to cover up.
Visiting LI NY - I am struck by the saturation ad buy by the state of NY to make people vaccinate children from COVID. They have health care providers basically saying I am health care provider and my kids are "vaxxed to the max" so you should get your kids vaxxed too. "Trust me, I am from the government." Unbelievable.
It's almost embarrassing to have to say this because I feel like it's very obvious and it's without bravado: I long ago realized that I like to dig to the bottom of things, all kinds of things. Lots of people don't. Chris Bray likes to dig, his detractors don't. In the same way, people tune in to legacy media, get the 'facts' and become well informed in 10 minutes or less. No fuss, no muss, no effort. All the while, eating chips and drinking what ever.
Alex, I think you are guilty of this same shallow analysis when it comes to your thought on the Ivermectin study. It is so obviously flawed: up to 8 days after symptoms before starting treatment with IVM, low dosing, among other obvious flaws. I love your work, but when it comes to IVM it appears you do not want to scratch the surface and find out why Kerch, McCullough, Pierre Kory, Malone etc etc are so convinced IVM works? I think your readers would love it if you played devils advocate on your own work and ask why are these guys so convinced IVM is effective…
When I'm out in my liberal California enclave, I see plenty of people still wearing masks. I see parents walking their kids outside in masks. I really want to engage them in a legitimate and polite conversation and ask them simple questions to get at why are they continuing to do this? I don't because I am pretty sure I would just get an angry response that I must want grandparents and kids to die. Sad. I was raised to be reasonable, but skeptical, it seems that it is now the reverse for society.
This is why highly intelligent people often go insane. Living amongst a huge population of idiots is very frustrating. The internet has made it all too easy for people with no reading comprehension skills nor analytical abilities to just google a headline that will agree with them (and now we know "fact checkers" know this) so they can feel a false sense of superiority in their idiocy.
There was a comment on the article that summed it all up for me:
The point that makes the vax "conspiracy theory" nonsense is that everyone - I mean everyone, would want a covid vaccine that worked and was safe. There is no reason for anyone, ever, to be against that. So for people, who have a stellar reputation built over a lifetime, to endanger their reputation and their job and their standing to discount an effective and safe covid vaccine makes zero sense. No, they didn't do it because they "wanted attention and money."
Excellent, thorough, and perhaps prophetic in some ways of how the "story" of our current situation will play out.
Doing your own work is definitely a motto and path any critical thinker embraces, follows, and remains diligently committed to with integrity no matter where it leads.
Fantastic article! The main secular reason our country is on the verge of collapse or maybe our own civil war…lack of critical thinking which requires reading, study, listening, questioning, time, and actual thought tending to wisdom.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What a mess. This brilliant piece certainly explains a lot about what's happening here. The press is too lazy to research, save a few who did so and got cancelled. Who in their right mind would take medical advice from these lazy morons?
In the category of DRS: I took a walk around a part of the campus of my local institute of higher learning (Big 10, world-class level, etc.) today. I was startled at the number of students wearing masks outdoors in parks and gardens. These are supposed to be “the best and brightest” but they are presenting a visual signal of their DRSness and lack of understanding (or DGFness) of basic viral biology. This does not bode well for our future. In some respects, I would like to see this campus return to the unrest of the 60’s when the students spoke up for their civil rights.
Just curious. The wife and I went out to dinner last night. I couldn’t help but notice a number of teenagers wearing masks, usually in a group outside. Is this a “thing” now with teens as a means of identification and less of an attempt to protect them from “germs”?
This applies to so much. This won't make sense if you haven't read the piece, but "it's a virus, you fucking idiot. Just do what the CDC says and shut up. What are you trying to do? Kill people?" or, and this is more appropriate at the moment, "It's a fledgling democracy, you fucking idiot. Of course we have to defend it, send weapons, and maybe even soldiers, and risk nuclear annihilation and spend billions of tax dollars and ruin our own economy. What are you? Pro-Putin?"
And not wanting to take the time to read is symptomatic of a deeper problem: Not wanting to take the time to think. Thinking is much too hard.
As someone who did graduate work in both Ireland and Northern Ireland between 1988 & 1994, I obviously appreciated that Bray illustrated his point using the Belfast Project Tapes.
Almost as good was the negative shoutout to Jon Kay (Quillette editor) on covid coverage. Last week I spent too much thankless time debating on a Quillette thread about covid only to be told that "Covid vaccines were a miracle that saved millions of lives and released us from lockdowns" and that people who think that we are heading toward authoritarianism live in a "conspiratorial fancy."
After responding that Africa fared quite well without "the miracle" and that Canada is not my idea of a democracy any longer, I haven't gone back to read the thread. The average Quillette commenter is SO Team "Safe and Effective," they strike me as never reading anything slightly dissenting.
Here's your totally unrelated bit of IRA history for the day - the IRA was largely irrelevant by the late 1960s until the incident at Burntollet Bridge in Northern Ireland. That day Unionists attacked a peaceful march of students that were responsible for transitioning the Catholic vs Protestant thing into a civil rights thing - it being the late 60s and all. Catholics were largely treated like shit in NI and this incident, as well as an oddly timed growing Unionist sentiment in NI, which itself was a response to those dirty hippy kids wanting "peace," lead to the provisional IRA. If the Unionist and NI leaders didn't bung it up at the end the troubles may have never been. People like to blame the provos for everything that went wrong, and they did some terrible things, but they were a violent response to the preceding violent actions taken by Unionists. The history of the IRA is not one uninterrupted chain of time, it's a string of loosely connected events that came and went.
There is a picture of Faucilini placed next to the rash inducing hands wipes as you exit my lacal CVS. I just bought some Krust the Clown stickers online. Civil disobedience might be occurring soon. Don't tell anybody...
I wish I could do a Vulcan Mind Meld with one of my liberal friends to confirm what I believe to be the case. But here is my theory living in liberal land for several decades.
I think the average liberal belongs to a personality type that is more risk-averse, more afraid of personal failure and less capable to put themselves out there and launch in the real world. You know the kids from school. This then caused them to seek more academic credentials to bolster their tenuous self confidence. And once achieved, they expected the prestige of their academic accomplishments to bolster what had been lacking in their character to make something of themselves.
Now, many of them, and more so now in our information economy, have gone on to be quite successful despite their character deficits. If fact, they have dominated the economy due to changes in the economy.
But their personalities are the same... they have not been "fixed" because the fix required self-awareness and self-help... not an advanced degree.
And so the polls continue to confirm... liberals more sad, more anxious, more depressed... even when they control the world.
This makes them very dangerous when they control the world. Because their psychology would turn nihilistic and against those that remind them that they are still not well. Remember... they put all that time, effort and money into their advanced degrees... and there is no way in hell they are going to every admit that not only did their advanced degrees fail to fix their character flaws. But it gets worse... they are likely more harmed from the fake scholarship of victimology that they, even though largely wealthy, white and privileged, find a strange attraction to (if only they could be some form of an oppressed minority they could farm enough excuses for their character flaws to blame on others.)
They really hate seeing the B-average captain of the Lacrosse team who started as a contractor out of high school and now owns a thriving business building high-end housing. And this guys is a well-respected member of the community. God that pisses them off!
These character-flawed people in power are angry in their misery and they are committed to making everyone else around them more miserable so they, our benevolent caring liberal types, can feel more better by comparison.
We better beat them at the polls, or we are screwed.
A riveting, and very sad account of the murder of Jean McConville in Northern Ireland was published in 2019. “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland”, by Patrick Radden Keefe, is not a cheerful read. But it was very much worth reading.
I may not be correct, but the thing that stands out to me is the Don’t Read Shit problem. We noticed in our business, starting about 10 years ago, that people just can’t read more than two sentences. We had to learn to communicate by bullet points only. So the thing that’s scary here is that’s he’s talking about educated people. They should be able to read & disseminate information for their job.
This makes me think of the memes that I see on social media used to discredit those 'doing the work' - normal people without specialized education that were forced to dig in and research because they could tell that something was not right and that they weren't being given all of the information. The meme would say something like 'suddenly, everyone is an infectious disease expert because they read one article'. We have all become Chris Bray.
While not a reporter nor a researcher (not professionally at least), stumbling across the worldwide tax and reporting system. (FBAR/FATCA) the US has and digging deep into it and trying to warn others about has had me experiencing the same. The vast majority of people suffer from DRS, as Mr. Bray relates. There will even turn down copies of the actually documents and pronounce judgments with the docs. still in your hand. Experiencing it all over again with the all this covid nonsense. I am not hopeful.
I read that article and the first comment by The King calls all the Drs and researchers against the covid vax anti vaxxers.
I thought the gist of the article was how people don’t read the research and then call the researchers stupid. That seems to be exactly what The King did in his comment.
Total transparency, I grew up during the troubles in a place called County Armagh - the area where I lived was dubiously known as "The Murder Triangle" and there's a great documentary on it on YouTube called 'Unquiet Graves". Essentially the British Government to this day are delaying and delaying providing evidence that they, the MI5, The Royal Ulster Constabulary (now a more professional service) colluded with Loyalist Paramilitaries to murder innocent catholics.... like your article on Jean McConville there is a desire amongst the elites to keep things quiet and protect folk on both sides of the political spectrum until the immediate family members have died off and all will just be quietly forgotten about. The Boston Project was a great initiative but according to our elites some things just need to be unspoken, a bit like the benefits of Ivermectin, Vitamin D.... sure ye know yerself.
If you're interested in delving more into the Troubles, Peter Taylor did a phenomenal bit of journalism for the BBC in the production of a three-piece series (The Provos, The Loyalists, and The Brits, respectively) that is the most fair and balanced piece of journalism about the period. It details the three main actors in the period of time. The Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Loyalists (Ulster Defense Force, etc.), and the Brits (the para regiment) are depicted in their own words and in full context. Many details will surprise people such as the fact that the 1st BN, British Parachute Regiment was originally sent in to protect Irish civilians from UDF violence being conducted against them. Their inability to do so eventually led to a resurgence in the IRA.
The journalism profession has always had a questionable reputation for reliability and integrity, dating back well before the American Revolution. Just think about the "war" between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, which precipitated a shooting was between the US and Spain over Cuba in 1898. I don't want to paint all journalists with the same brush. There are undoubtedly good ones out there who try hard to exemplify what their profession should be. But if there are as many as 50% laggards and slackers, the profession as a whole is compromised.
In 1994, I saw Tom Johnson, then CEO of CNN, speak at a public event in California. In the Q&A period, I asked him, "Why doesn't the journalism profession have professional standards ... and police them? Lawyers have codes of ethics, doctors have the Hippocratic oath. Why not a 10-point enforceable code of ethics for journalists?" Johnson allowed as how that was a good idea. But of course, nothing ever happened as a result of it.
Great but depressing read…I thought before all of this that it was mostly smart phones and the sheer amount of information available that was making us incapable of focusing and willing to delve into things. But it’s just human nature and now i see that this was always so (though i think social media has made these tendencies worse). People like simple stories and narratives because the narrative either confirms what “their side” already believes or if it doesn’t, they can simply discard it (with a hat trick to “fact checkers” to pretend they really thought about the counter argument).
Patrick Keefe wrote both Say Nothing (about The Troubles and Tapes) and Empire of Pain (about Oxicodine crisis). Anyone who knows the story of how Purdue Pharma worked big government and who can’t see thru what was happening with big pharma and Covid vaccines has intellectual blunders on - or worse, but no name calling, right?
Too many people are trapped in the Big Lie. "If you tell a big enough lie, often enough people will start to believe it." This quote goes on to say that "the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie." Our best weapon is the truth and I know it is frustrating to try and converse with those on the Team Apocalypse Cult, but getting the truth out is more important today then ever before. Also, as a wise man by the name of Jesus once said, "They will know the truth, and the truth shall set them free." Keep up the good fight and stay strong and free Team Reality!
Astounding. "But Hufington Post (url follows)" and "why should I trust you more than Fauci" and "I'd rather follow statistics from CDC"... is really verbatim. Good to know stupidity has a pattern.
It’s a good piece and very well written but it does the journalists of both northern and Southern Ireland a disservice - some of them risked their lives to deliver the truth.
I would love to hear people's stories of how they tried to talk to liberals in real life about why they are skeptical of the covid vaccine and the responses they got. People don't have the balls to shame people in real life the way they do online, and it's quite obvious talking to someone in real life just how much they understand and how much shit they regurgitate from CNN
Here is one of the most effective videos about how horrible vaccines really are – a study of vaccinated vs unvaccinated children – clocking in at only 6 minutes:
https://bitchute.com/video/gROe4FJFExbD/
The vaccinated children are exponentially more likely to be chronically ill in their life or even die early. Please share it far and wide.
Brilliant piece. Thanks for sharing
I'm fumbling around with an idea of what I've named The Tyranny of the Immortalists.
I see so many people--truly obsessive--about diet and exercise and no chemicals in the house and special plastic bottles with no XYZ chemicals....and then they're slathering their kids in sunscreen (SPF 1,874), wrapping their kids in bubble-wrap and become apoplectic if the kid eats one Hershey bar.
AND then, wearing six masks, they're the first ones in line for an untested "vaccine" and scolding anyone who doesn't hold these same beliefs, and demanding unquestioning obedience because their kids' lives are supposedly in danger.
OK. Look: I agree: there's a whole lot of garbage Out There. And too many chemicals. And way too much poison in our food. But...
SOMETIMES YOU'RE GOING TO GET SICK ANYWAY.
And SOMEDAY WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.
In the meantime, you can eat a sensible diet, be faithful to a reasonable amount of exercise, and don't bathe in Round-Up, then you can sometimes indulge in a Hershey bar or even the occasional handful of Cheetos. Red meat isn't bad for you--and red meat is why we have the variety of teeth in our mouths.
If you take a rational approach to a basic, sensible--and even pleasant--lifestyle, your immune system is an impressive part of your body. You don't need a pill or an injection every time you get a hangnail--even for a hangnail developed in a lab in China and financed by your tax dollars.
The same finger-wagging obsessives who want to make decisions for everyone are going to end up DEAD....just like everyone else.
Deep down inside? We all know this.
“The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.” - William Osler
I was on a Disney board today that my family and I used to enjoy. We are doing our best to move people away from spending money at Disney. Anyway, I've had to read all these idiots talk about how they are going to go, but still wear their mask. They are all worried people are going to look at them funny or that someone might say something to them. Really... We spent 2 years being yelled at by these same fools and now I'm not supposed to make fun of you for not being an adult and giving your worthless piece of face diaper that's nothing more than a superiority symbol in your mind or a security blanket at best? Please... Anyway my post was deleted.
I said, "There is a reason we take away our children's security blankets and pacifiers from them at a certain age. It's just down right embarrassing that they still have them. LOL
The site moderator called that comment "a mild personal attack" and deleted the post! LOL
My point is, these people need to be called out for their foolishness and be shamed for their stupidity and ignorance! I'll never understand why folks get mad at the truth tellers and defend the lying POS! Make zero sense!
It’s always been this way but it’s a case of magnitude now.
For instance, they demonized Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling as a quack for asserting that Vitamin C could extend survival in terminal inoperable cancers. The way that was done was by rigging new trials that administered C differently than the trials conducted by Pauling and Cameron: https://themariachiyears.substack.com/p/modern-ignorance-and-ancient-wisdom-8c1?s=w
Laetrile and Coley's toxins, both developed at Sloan Kettering, are other historical examples where sleight of hand and/or outright fraud was used to pull the wool over the eyes of the public: https://themariachiyears.substack.com/p/coleys-toxins-how-the-most-effective?s=w
As a journalist covering corona, I think you may find those historical examples interesting because they lend insight into the current debacle.
It does come back to journalistic integrity and critical thinking skills, but as the Sloan Kettering debacle shows (as I detail in my second piece above), they will fire journalists and science writers with integrity if they threaten institutional narrative or moneyed interests.
I'm hopeful that the present crisis is creating a critical mass of people that will lead to some sort of Kuhnian revolution in the health sciences — although I know that there is much more that is also going on in the world, socially and economically, that also intersects with corona, and we are seeing corruption and incompetence across the board.
At least we have the internet to thank. Although they are trying hard, the internet revolution makes it a bit more difficult to throttle the truth now. That’s why trust it at all-time lows. In the past it would have been easier to cover up.
Visiting LI NY - I am struck by the saturation ad buy by the state of NY to make people vaccinate children from COVID. They have health care providers basically saying I am health care provider and my kids are "vaxxed to the max" so you should get your kids vaxxed too. "Trust me, I am from the government." Unbelievable.
It's almost embarrassing to have to say this because I feel like it's very obvious and it's without bravado: I long ago realized that I like to dig to the bottom of things, all kinds of things. Lots of people don't. Chris Bray likes to dig, his detractors don't. In the same way, people tune in to legacy media, get the 'facts' and become well informed in 10 minutes or less. No fuss, no muss, no effort. All the while, eating chips and drinking what ever.
Really great piece and such a sad result all the way around.
Alex, I think you are guilty of this same shallow analysis when it comes to your thought on the Ivermectin study. It is so obviously flawed: up to 8 days after symptoms before starting treatment with IVM, low dosing, among other obvious flaws. I love your work, but when it comes to IVM it appears you do not want to scratch the surface and find out why Kerch, McCullough, Pierre Kory, Malone etc etc are so convinced IVM works? I think your readers would love it if you played devils advocate on your own work and ask why are these guys so convinced IVM is effective…
When I'm out in my liberal California enclave, I see plenty of people still wearing masks. I see parents walking their kids outside in masks. I really want to engage them in a legitimate and polite conversation and ask them simple questions to get at why are they continuing to do this? I don't because I am pretty sure I would just get an angry response that I must want grandparents and kids to die. Sad. I was raised to be reasonable, but skeptical, it seems that it is now the reverse for society.
This is why highly intelligent people often go insane. Living amongst a huge population of idiots is very frustrating. The internet has made it all too easy for people with no reading comprehension skills nor analytical abilities to just google a headline that will agree with them (and now we know "fact checkers" know this) so they can feel a false sense of superiority in their idiocy.
What is funny, but not really, is that policy makers read what media writes to find out what is going on.
And all the reporting is a quick perusal of a press release, usually spun for the intended audience.
Everyone is flying blind.
It's not so different than what's happening with the laptop(s)
There was a comment on the article that summed it all up for me:
The point that makes the vax "conspiracy theory" nonsense is that everyone - I mean everyone, would want a covid vaccine that worked and was safe. There is no reason for anyone, ever, to be against that. So for people, who have a stellar reputation built over a lifetime, to endanger their reputation and their job and their standing to discount an effective and safe covid vaccine makes zero sense. No, they didn't do it because they "wanted attention and money."
Excellent, thorough, and perhaps prophetic in some ways of how the "story" of our current situation will play out.
Doing your own work is definitely a motto and path any critical thinker embraces, follows, and remains diligently committed to with integrity no matter where it leads.
Fantastic article! The main secular reason our country is on the verge of collapse or maybe our own civil war…lack of critical thinking which requires reading, study, listening, questioning, time, and actual thought tending to wisdom.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What a mess. This brilliant piece certainly explains a lot about what's happening here. The press is too lazy to research, save a few who did so and got cancelled. Who in their right mind would take medical advice from these lazy morons?
I got to the end. This is one of the reasons why I love your work. Your pettiness is not the reason. It’s a balance, but this tips it in your favor
In the category of DRS: I took a walk around a part of the campus of my local institute of higher learning (Big 10, world-class level, etc.) today. I was startled at the number of students wearing masks outdoors in parks and gardens. These are supposed to be “the best and brightest” but they are presenting a visual signal of their DRSness and lack of understanding (or DGFness) of basic viral biology. This does not bode well for our future. In some respects, I would like to see this campus return to the unrest of the 60’s when the students spoke up for their civil rights.
Just curious. The wife and I went out to dinner last night. I couldn’t help but notice a number of teenagers wearing masks, usually in a group outside. Is this a “thing” now with teens as a means of identification and less of an attempt to protect them from “germs”?
This applies to so much. This won't make sense if you haven't read the piece, but "it's a virus, you fucking idiot. Just do what the CDC says and shut up. What are you trying to do? Kill people?" or, and this is more appropriate at the moment, "It's a fledgling democracy, you fucking idiot. Of course we have to defend it, send weapons, and maybe even soldiers, and risk nuclear annihilation and spend billions of tax dollars and ruin our own economy. What are you? Pro-Putin?"
And not wanting to take the time to read is symptomatic of a deeper problem: Not wanting to take the time to think. Thinking is much too hard.
As someone who did graduate work in both Ireland and Northern Ireland between 1988 & 1994, I obviously appreciated that Bray illustrated his point using the Belfast Project Tapes.
Almost as good was the negative shoutout to Jon Kay (Quillette editor) on covid coverage. Last week I spent too much thankless time debating on a Quillette thread about covid only to be told that "Covid vaccines were a miracle that saved millions of lives and released us from lockdowns" and that people who think that we are heading toward authoritarianism live in a "conspiratorial fancy."
After responding that Africa fared quite well without "the miracle" and that Canada is not my idea of a democracy any longer, I haven't gone back to read the thread. The average Quillette commenter is SO Team "Safe and Effective," they strike me as never reading anything slightly dissenting.
Is it also TLDR when our press researches the Minsk Accords, the Azov battalions, and Putin is the boogey man narrative?
Here's your totally unrelated bit of IRA history for the day - the IRA was largely irrelevant by the late 1960s until the incident at Burntollet Bridge in Northern Ireland. That day Unionists attacked a peaceful march of students that were responsible for transitioning the Catholic vs Protestant thing into a civil rights thing - it being the late 60s and all. Catholics were largely treated like shit in NI and this incident, as well as an oddly timed growing Unionist sentiment in NI, which itself was a response to those dirty hippy kids wanting "peace," lead to the provisional IRA. If the Unionist and NI leaders didn't bung it up at the end the troubles may have never been. People like to blame the provos for everything that went wrong, and they did some terrible things, but they were a violent response to the preceding violent actions taken by Unionists. The history of the IRA is not one uninterrupted chain of time, it's a string of loosely connected events that came and went.
There is a picture of Faucilini placed next to the rash inducing hands wipes as you exit my lacal CVS. I just bought some Krust the Clown stickers online. Civil disobedience might be occurring soon. Don't tell anybody...
I wish I could do a Vulcan Mind Meld with one of my liberal friends to confirm what I believe to be the case. But here is my theory living in liberal land for several decades.
I think the average liberal belongs to a personality type that is more risk-averse, more afraid of personal failure and less capable to put themselves out there and launch in the real world. You know the kids from school. This then caused them to seek more academic credentials to bolster their tenuous self confidence. And once achieved, they expected the prestige of their academic accomplishments to bolster what had been lacking in their character to make something of themselves.
Now, many of them, and more so now in our information economy, have gone on to be quite successful despite their character deficits. If fact, they have dominated the economy due to changes in the economy.
But their personalities are the same... they have not been "fixed" because the fix required self-awareness and self-help... not an advanced degree.
And so the polls continue to confirm... liberals more sad, more anxious, more depressed... even when they control the world.
This makes them very dangerous when they control the world. Because their psychology would turn nihilistic and against those that remind them that they are still not well. Remember... they put all that time, effort and money into their advanced degrees... and there is no way in hell they are going to every admit that not only did their advanced degrees fail to fix their character flaws. But it gets worse... they are likely more harmed from the fake scholarship of victimology that they, even though largely wealthy, white and privileged, find a strange attraction to (if only they could be some form of an oppressed minority they could farm enough excuses for their character flaws to blame on others.)
They really hate seeing the B-average captain of the Lacrosse team who started as a contractor out of high school and now owns a thriving business building high-end housing. And this guys is a well-respected member of the community. God that pisses them off!
These character-flawed people in power are angry in their misery and they are committed to making everyone else around them more miserable so they, our benevolent caring liberal types, can feel more better by comparison.
We better beat them at the polls, or we are screwed.
A riveting, and very sad account of the murder of Jean McConville in Northern Ireland was published in 2019. “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland”, by Patrick Radden Keefe, is not a cheerful read. But it was very much worth reading.
I may not be correct, but the thing that stands out to me is the Don’t Read Shit problem. We noticed in our business, starting about 10 years ago, that people just can’t read more than two sentences. We had to learn to communicate by bullet points only. So the thing that’s scary here is that’s he’s talking about educated people. They should be able to read & disseminate information for their job.
This makes me think of the memes that I see on social media used to discredit those 'doing the work' - normal people without specialized education that were forced to dig in and research because they could tell that something was not right and that they weren't being given all of the information. The meme would say something like 'suddenly, everyone is an infectious disease expert because they read one article'. We have all become Chris Bray.
I copy here my comment on the linked substack.
While not a reporter nor a researcher (not professionally at least), stumbling across the worldwide tax and reporting system. (FBAR/FATCA) the US has and digging deep into it and trying to warn others about has had me experiencing the same. The vast majority of people suffer from DRS, as Mr. Bray relates. There will even turn down copies of the actually documents and pronounce judgments with the docs. still in your hand. Experiencing it all over again with the all this covid nonsense. I am not hopeful.
Chris Bray is far from stupid or evil Berenson. He sounds like one of us.
Alex please read https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-coronavirus-update-unvaccinated-disproportionately-risk-safety-of/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Coronavirus%20Update&utm_content=2022-4-25_20&utm_term=Coronavirus%20Update:%20Unvaccinated%20disproportionately%20risk%20safety%20of%20those%20who%20are%20vaccinated&utm_campaign=newsletter&cu_id=AJIrYgXl7dB9Jn%2FovOUULhSL00Fbp51F.
I read that article and the first comment by The King calls all the Drs and researchers against the covid vax anti vaxxers.
I thought the gist of the article was how people don’t read the research and then call the researchers stupid. That seems to be exactly what The King did in his comment.
CARRAGEENAN. A SEAWEED CAUSES BIG GASTRO PROBLEMS. NO HORMONES, OR ANTIBIOTICS, BUT YOUR DAIRY, CHICKEN CAN HAVE THIS NATURAL ITEM IN IT. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/04/12/march-consumer-price-index-n2605753?utm_source=breakingemail
This is true about so many things. We all need to do our homework. Good post.
Yup.
Total transparency, I grew up during the troubles in a place called County Armagh - the area where I lived was dubiously known as "The Murder Triangle" and there's a great documentary on it on YouTube called 'Unquiet Graves". Essentially the British Government to this day are delaying and delaying providing evidence that they, the MI5, The Royal Ulster Constabulary (now a more professional service) colluded with Loyalist Paramilitaries to murder innocent catholics.... like your article on Jean McConville there is a desire amongst the elites to keep things quiet and protect folk on both sides of the political spectrum until the immediate family members have died off and all will just be quietly forgotten about. The Boston Project was a great initiative but according to our elites some things just need to be unspoken, a bit like the benefits of Ivermectin, Vitamin D.... sure ye know yerself.
Tl:, dr; most reporters are lazy and incurious. This isn't news but needs to be repeated often.
If you're interested in delving more into the Troubles, Peter Taylor did a phenomenal bit of journalism for the BBC in the production of a three-piece series (The Provos, The Loyalists, and The Brits, respectively) that is the most fair and balanced piece of journalism about the period. It details the three main actors in the period of time. The Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Loyalists (Ulster Defense Force, etc.), and the Brits (the para regiment) are depicted in their own words and in full context. Many details will surprise people such as the fact that the 1st BN, British Parachute Regiment was originally sent in to protect Irish civilians from UDF violence being conducted against them. Their inability to do so eventually led to a resurgence in the IRA.
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/provos/
Love this, “ There is no point to caring about the things people like this say to you, or about you. Be who you are. Do your work.”
The journalism profession has always had a questionable reputation for reliability and integrity, dating back well before the American Revolution. Just think about the "war" between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, which precipitated a shooting was between the US and Spain over Cuba in 1898. I don't want to paint all journalists with the same brush. There are undoubtedly good ones out there who try hard to exemplify what their profession should be. But if there are as many as 50% laggards and slackers, the profession as a whole is compromised.
In 1994, I saw Tom Johnson, then CEO of CNN, speak at a public event in California. In the Q&A period, I asked him, "Why doesn't the journalism profession have professional standards ... and police them? Lawyers have codes of ethics, doctors have the Hippocratic oath. Why not a 10-point enforceable code of ethics for journalists?" Johnson allowed as how that was a good idea. But of course, nothing ever happened as a result of it.
"There is no point to caring about the things people like this say to you, or about you. Be who you are. Do your work."
Exactly... brilliant piece. Thank you for bring it to us, Alex.
Yep read that yesterday. Beware... Funny how government people just hole shit away...
Great but depressing read…I thought before all of this that it was mostly smart phones and the sheer amount of information available that was making us incapable of focusing and willing to delve into things. But it’s just human nature and now i see that this was always so (though i think social media has made these tendencies worse). People like simple stories and narratives because the narrative either confirms what “their side” already believes or if it doesn’t, they can simply discard it (with a hat trick to “fact checkers” to pretend they really thought about the counter argument).
Patrick Keefe wrote both Say Nothing (about The Troubles and Tapes) and Empire of Pain (about Oxicodine crisis). Anyone who knows the story of how Purdue Pharma worked big government and who can’t see thru what was happening with big pharma and Covid vaccines has intellectual blunders on - or worse, but no name calling, right?
Too many people are trapped in the Big Lie. "If you tell a big enough lie, often enough people will start to believe it." This quote goes on to say that "the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie." Our best weapon is the truth and I know it is frustrating to try and converse with those on the Team Apocalypse Cult, but getting the truth out is more important today then ever before. Also, as a wise man by the name of Jesus once said, "They will know the truth, and the truth shall set them free." Keep up the good fight and stay strong and free Team Reality!
Astounding. "But Hufington Post (url follows)" and "why should I trust you more than Fauci" and "I'd rather follow statistics from CDC"... is really verbatim. Good to know stupidity has a pattern.
It’s a good piece and very well written but it does the journalists of both northern and Southern Ireland a disservice - some of them risked their lives to deliver the truth.