Martyr Made discusses the 2020 elections

 An individual who uses the Twitter handle @martyrmade wrote a long thread I copy below. I'm also providing the link to his site, full of excellent post casts (don't miss "The Anti-Humans"). 

The twitter thread roll up follows:

Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc). 

These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them

Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew.

This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff - who were on TV saying they'd seen clear evidence of collusion w/Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn't - all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake.

At first, many Trump ppl were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn't make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov't when it didn't happen.

We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying.

Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year.

Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov't destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected administration. 

This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper.

GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election. 

It's hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov't as a conspiracy... Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate ppl who don't stand for the Anthem.

They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov't official, because they feel most betrayed by them. 

The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they'd be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period. 

This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true.

They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots.

They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence.

Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution.

Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn't just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump ppl expected shenanigans by now. 

Re: "fake impeachment", we now know that Trump's request for Ukraine to cooperate w/the DOJ regarding Biden's $ activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request.

Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a "mistake" - but, ya know, the election's over, so who cares?

Goes w/o saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr's laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn't have been banned.

Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information.

The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process.

And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew. 

Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real.

Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange - the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc - but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in DMs!).

Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr's laptop would've been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would've been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof. 

Even the courts' refusal of the case gets nowhere w/them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They'll say, w/good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house?

It's a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were "protests", but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too.

Forget the ballot conspiracies. It's a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system. 

They knew it was unconstitutional, it's right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn't see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn't implied, it was direct.

a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1, b) The press is part of the operation, c) Election rules were changed, d) Big Tech censors opposition, e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged, f) Trump is banned from social media.

They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their gov't is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to keep them getting it. Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might've kept him alive. /end

https://martyrmade.com

CDC Guidelines for Vaccinated Individuals

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines to impose restrictions on Americans who are fully vaccinated against Wuhan disease. Unfortunately the CDC didn't clarify if the guidelines apply to non citizen legal residents or their recommendations to President Biden on how to deal with illegal aliens who are being allowed to enter and are being bused all over the US even if they are infected. 

The agency’s guidance states those who have received a full course of Wuhan vaccine may get together with other fully vaccinated individuals in small groups inside their homes without masks or physical distancing (duh). However, I believe it's healthier to meet in larger groups in bowling alleys, bingo parlors, shooting ranges, and other locations.  They can also visit with unvaccinated people from one other household who are at low risk for severe disease, most of whom probably already got infected and are immune. Hell, go to Florida and spend time on the beach! 

The guidelines should also say (but they don't) fully vaccinated people don’t need to quarantine or take a Wuhan test if they’ve been exposed, unless they’re symptomatic. However, they should still gargle three times a day with Listerine. 

 

“You can visit your grandparents if you’ve been vaccinated and they have been, too,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a White House briefing Monday. “If grandparents have been vaccinated, they can visit their daughter (what about their sons?) and her family even if  they have not been vaccinated, so long as the daughter and her family are not at risk for severe disease.” This display of anti male feminist ideology will be typical of government agencies under that dementia ridden bastard in the White House. 

Vaccinated individuals should still wear a mask and social distance in public settings and avoid medium- to large-sized gatherings. The agency has yet to figure out those who already survived the disease are free to party with those vaccinated. 

CDC will release updated guidelines on travel for those who have been vaccinated. The CDC doesn't want people to travel but provide a list of public health measures in the case that someone must travel (illegals are excluded from these controls). Given their mistakes and woke ideology we can continue to expect the CDC will keep on issuing dumb guidelines. 

Cultural War by Juan Carlos Girauta

 In its modern sense, the culture war does not come from the United States but from Italy, specifically from a man who elaborated his theories in prison almost a century ago: Antonio Gramsci.  If one conquers literalist laziness, he will find out that the culture war, or the cultural battle, does not mean being a warrior all day but in gaining hegemony in institutions, the media, the University, the school, the publishing world, etc.  .  That is why Gramsci's is a "passive revolution" and gradual.

 Of course a communist, Gramsci is the most alive thing that Marxism has.  What is Marxian (the work of Karl Marx) is no longer bought by anyone serious and endowed with good intellectual faith once its central theories, such as that of labor value, have been demolished and crushed;  once milked by the Frankfurt School (in the United States and in Germany) and by Sartre, Althusser, or Deleuze in France, a series of superstitions with scientific overtones: "reification," "commodity fetishism," and other quibbles.  Bad vinegar gave the milking.  The exception, Gramsci

 Because he is the highest and most attractive point of the Marxist paradox: it turns out that the active agent of historical change is political and intellectual.  Areas that, for Marxism, belong to the superstructure, smoke that does not change history.  Well, no!  If Marx turned Hegel around like a sock, Gramsci did the same with Marx.  Of course, there is no paradox but contradiction.  Or not even that.  As Scruton, the great British conservative theorist, wants, Gramsci simply disproved Marx's theory of history, although neither he ever said it nor did his countless followers mention it.  The reasons have to do with the prestige of the intellectual within the "bourgeois society" that he wants to destroy.

 And now let's look back at the Spain of today.  If someone other than Jon Juaristi announced the funeral of our liberal democracy, it would be considered literary license.  But he just did it on these pages.  You have to take it very seriously.  If it is not dead, the Spanish liberal democracy is dying.  It is the result of a process started long ago in the University and the school, in the arts and in publishing houses.  And, with more resistance, in the institutions.  We can affirm that this process has followed the guidelines of Gramsci's Theory of Hegemony.  It has followed them within a larger trend, western in scope.  Locally, the path has been walked without awareness of the purpose.  Except in the case of Podemos, which has successfully precipitated events by consciously following the teachings of the Italian communist.

 Look if we will be kaffir, bellicose and sectarian those in favor of undoing the operation following those same guidelines, after public signaling of the precise mechanisms used, that in reality we are recognizing the undeniable effectiveness of Antonio Gramsci's ideas.

Kamala Harris the Antivaxxer

As it turns out, Kamala Harris isn't satisfied with the results of the Democrats' riot and vandalism campaign.  Now she wants to undermine public health by sowing distrust in the Wuhan virus vaccine...

DANA BASH: As you know, President Trump has promised a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year or maybe sooner. Would you trust that vaccine?

HARRIS: I think that we have learned since this pandemic started, but really before that, that there’s very little that we can trust that can comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth. From the beginning of this pandemic, he has called it a hoax. He has muzzled the public health experts. He has minimized the seriousness of it. He has created false expectations for the American people and American families, even though, if he had listened to the scientists and the experts, he would have understood the gravity of it and the power that he, as president of the United States, has to actually save lives. And none of those were his priorities. His priority was to do whatever he thought was politically expedient. And so, no, I would not trust his word. I would trust the word of public health experts and scientists, but not Donald Trump.

BASH: But do you trust that, in the situation where we’re in now, that the public health experts and the scientists will get the last word on the efficacy of a vaccine?

HARRIS: If past is prologue, that they will not, that will be muzzled, they will be suppressed, they will be sidelined, because he’s looking at an election coming up in less than 60 days, and he’s grasping for whatever he can get to pretend that he has been a leader on this issue, when he has not.

BASH: So, let’s just say there is a vaccine that is approved and even distributed before the election. Would you get it?

HARRIS: Well, I think that’s going to be an issue for all of us. I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump. And it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about.

November 2020 US elections

 I will be voting Republican. I understand the Democrats' identitarian (aka racist) ideology classifies me as "person of color" (POC), which entitles me to privileges, and, if the Democrat Green New Deal gets passed, I will benefit from reparations paid by pale skinned male adults between 18 and 65 (go read House Resolution 109 and you will find this included in the text, although it's worded in a subtle fashion). So even though I will benefit from those handouts, things look grimmer for my grandchildren, because my family is integrated into US society quite well, and some of them are too pale skinned and too Texas Bible belt to sell themselves as POC. So they will become part of the abused and discriminated against population because their skin is too pale, and they will suffer all sorts of indignities because supposedly they were born privileged and are racists. And I definitely don't want that future for them. 

Then there's foreign policy. Trump has performed much better than previous presidents, avoided getting soldiers into stupid wars, and is trying to disengage from foreign entanglements. This gets me on a personal level because I have a grandson in the military and he already served in South Korea and the Middle East, and I hate the idea that a Democrat like Obama or a neocon Republican like Bush will make more mistakes. Obama in particular made many serious mistakes, such as helping Libya become a failed state, igniting civil wars in Iraq and Syria, wrecking relations with Russia by encouraging Ukraine to make moves to join the EU and eventually NATO, looking the other way as the Chinese began imperial expansion, and throwing the Cuban and Venezuelan people under a bus. 

Trump's push to reduce unemployment and emphasize US made was wise, as shown by the inability to respond to the pandemic properly because so much is imported from abroad. He made a mistake listening to WHO and Fauci wgen they said wearing masks didn't help the general population, but he has done very well accelerating the use of medicines and palliatives such as convalescent plasma. And the super fast vaccine development would never have been possible with a Clinton or a Biden in charge. 

I dont like Trump's big mouth, he tweets too much BS, probably because he's an amateur and not a politician, and he has taken a lot of time to learn to pick decent secretaries and advisors, but he's settling down, and his team is gradually improving to a B+. 

On the other hand his firm stance against riots and vandalism are a huge plus versus the Democrats, who in many cases are encouraging it.  The Democrats' kneeling and the pro BLM song and dance at their convention are nauseating. I have photos of BLM leader and cofounder Opal Tometi with Maduro and wearing a Venezuelan government uniform vest and ID tag. 

We know BLM are self declared Marxists, and their ideology is destructive if not downright evil. So my advice to family and friends is to vote GOP across the board, because a political party that encourages BLM is going to take the US into a very dark period. 

I want to mention that to me some Democrats have gone over the line defending late term abortions, which I see as putting babies in a large blender and turning the ON button. And I despise their emerging worship of science, which they use to justify skipping over common sense, engineering and economics. 

And that's all I have to say about this topic. 

Wuhan virus convalescent patient plasma is a cure

This is the Google translation of an article in ABC, a Spanish newspaper. ABC has adopted a very focused anti Trump editorial line, therefore its articles always include a fuzzy or subtle attack against anything Trump may have done or said. ABC is read by a large Hispanic audience in the US, therefore the anti Trump slant is a clear attempt to influence US elections. 

The bottom line of the article, if we strip away the bullshit, is that Wuhan hospitalized patients treated with the blood plasma from recovering or recovered patients don't die. The key is to give them the plasma during the first week after the onset of symptoms. 

Article follows: 

"It is not conclusive yet, but the plasma of those of the patients recovered from Covid could be a good ally to avoid deaths and admissions to ICUs.  The first clinical trial, carried out in 20 hospitals and blood transfusion centers throughout Spain, reveals encouraging results for the treatment of the pandemic.  Transfusing the blood with the antibodies of convalescent people who have overcome the virus could slow the cascading worsening of the sick, the researchers conclude.

 The study, coordinated by the Puerta de Hierro Majadahonda Hospital in Madrid, offers a small but revealing sample of 81 patients during the first wave of the virus.  At random, half were given plasma plus a standard treatment (remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, dexamethasone ...) and the rest (the control group) medication without plasma.  All were treated with a single dose of plasma and received medical aids for respiratory support.  Six of the 43 patients in the control group - who did not receive the transfusion with the antibodies - worsened, needed to be admitted to the intensive care unit and received assisted respiration.  Fourteen percent died, but none of the 38 patients treated with plasma lost their lives.  The survival rate of these patients was one hundred percent.

 Works in the early stage

 “We believe that the therapy has worked because we treat our patients in an early stage of the disease, when they had just been hospitalized and it had only been 7-8 days since the onset of the first symptoms.  At that time, there is a viral peak, but the disease has not yet triggered an inflammatory storm.  The plasma provides new antibodies that reinforce the immune system and help the patient to fight against the infection ", explains Rafael Duarte, coordinator of the Spanish study together with the researcher Cristina Avendaño.

 Duarte's analysis agrees with the results of two other studies conducted in China and the Netherlands, which included hospitalized patients with more severe forms of Covid-19, some admitted to ICUs.  In both studies, the conclusion is different from the Spanish study.  Plasma was not helpful, probably because the patients treated were more severe cases in which transfusions did not appear to be the best option.

 Who benefits?

Who can benefit from transfusions, at what time, at what age or with what complication of Covid, are questions that still have no answer.  Spanish research wants to answer them in a new phase of the study that will include more patients.

 The results of the Spanish studies will be added to an international scientific initiative that aims to add several clinical trials, "like the pieces of a great puzzle," says Duarte.  Only then can it be offered as a non-experimental treatment, he says, referring to the accelerated approval that the United States has already done.  "Now the available scientific evidence does not advise it, although the United States Drug Administration may have information that is not in the public domain," he says. If it worked, there would be an apparently safe and inexpensive treatment that would not depend on the production of the pharmaceutical industry in the absence of other alternatives.  And most importantly, capable of saving lives.

link https://www.abc.es/sociedad/abci-transfusiones-plasma-evitan-ingresos-y-muertes-202009030132_noticia.html

Editorial from ABC: Spain's Socialist Government Sucks Big Time

This is a translation into English of today's editorial in ABC, a Spanish newspaper. The Spanish original is below. 

The following is a short context: Spain has had the highest number of Wuhan virus deaths in the world per million inhabitants. 

The main reason was the government decision to ignore the epidemic until AFTER the March 8 feminist March, which was supposed to coincide with a new Feminist Law introduced by the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero. Montero happens to be Pablo Iglesias' common  law wife, with whom she has three children. Her previous labor experience was as supermarket cashier, and member of Parlament, a job she got thanks to her relationship with Iglesias.  Montero's inexperience and incompetence led to the law being scuttled by opposition by other government ministers, who openly explained it was unconstitutional and had numerous errors. 

So by March 8 the government had allowed the uncontrolled entry of travelers from China and Italy, including several thousand football fans who came from the Milan region,  where the virus was already spreading and killing hundreds of Italians. The government also failed to stockpile medicines, masks, gloves, etc, and eventually the epidemic was overwhelming hospitals. The government response was a national state of alarm, and orders for the population to stay home. This was continued for over two months, reduced the infections and deaths. It also destroyed the economy, and today Spain has the highest unemployment in Europe, over 20%. 

Here's the latest infections per million graph. It's important to understand the number of tests per million in Spain gas been very low, especially in March through June. 

In late June, they opened with little controls, and the result has been another spike in infections. The President, Sanchez, decided to take his August vacations as the infections and deaths climbed. Last weekend he returned from vacation, and yesterday gave a speech declaring the central government wasn't going to take action, that it was up to each Autonomous Region (similar to a US state) to ask for a State of Alarm and decide what to do. The argument made by legal scholars is that such a response is irrational and it's better to use a Public Health Emergency law passed in 1986. So as of right now everything is up in the air.

The translated text follows. The Spanish original is below: 

"  The accumulation of trifles with which Pedro Sánchez presented himself to public opinion after his vacation, and only after a general climate of unfavorable public opinion due to his indolence and lack of leadership in the face of the pandemic, shows to what extent the inactivity of the Government  it is intoxicating everything.  At the gates of the classic restart of the political course, the Government is paralyzed and blocked.  It only emits its well-known propaganda and demagoguery signals, and its capacity to unload responsibilities on others, in this case the autonomies, is scandalous.  Spain has a passive and disappeared government, and only the lie motivates it to continue governing.

 Ministers as representative of "sanchismo" as Carmen Calvo or José Luis Ábalos are absent, and they only resurface from time to time to promote revenge political projects that are not a priority against the crisis that is devastating Spain.  Margarita Robles emerges as the discordant minister, Irene Montero, as a star of the gossip magazines, and Alberto Garzón, unpublished in a Consumer portfolio that should never have ceased to be a mere general direction, only speaks to attack the constitutional system.  The Minister of Justice, failed in any management, only competes with Fernando Grande-Marlaska, burned since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis for his sectarianism and inability to manage such a relevant department.  In Universities, Manuel Castells does not seem to know yet that he is a minister and the rectors feel abandoned by him.  "He is leaving us alone in the return to class", they affirm, and demand a protocol that updates the last one, communicated three months ago.  Rutilating toll charges like Darias or González Laya are irrelevant for all intents and purposes.  In Tourism, there is no minister in Europe as disoriented as Maroto, and in Finance or Economy, Montero and Calviño continue to manipulate the data to glimpse non-existent green shoots.  In Science, Duque is a perfect stranger in an unsustainable situation, and in Labor, Díaz has made deception his day to day ... The evaluation of each portfolio is summarized in an absurdity that forces one to ask what the Prime Minister needs more for.  of a score of ministers in full recession.

 Sánchez knowingly lies, and despite this, society does not seem capable of reacting.  The fear of a new tragic phase of the pandemic is becoming noticeable.  Regarding the economic collapse, words are unnecessary and it is enough for each Spaniard to feel his pocket.  But in this climate, Sánchez still smiles with the arrogance of those who continue to boast of leading a long legislature instead of assuming that Spain is dying under his command."

Original text: 

"El cúmulo de naderías con las que Pedro Sánchez se presentó a la opinión pública después de sus vacaciones, y solo tras un clima general de opinión pública desfavorable por su indolencia y falta de liderazgo frente a la pandemia, demuestra hasta qué punto la inactividad del Gobierno está intoxicándolo todo. A las puertas del clásico reinicio del curso político, el Gobierno está paralizado y bloqueado. Solo emite sus conocidas señales de propaganda y demagogia, y resulta escandalosa su capacidad para descargar responsabilidades en otros, en este caso las autonomías. España tiene un Gobierno pasivo y desaparecido, y solo la mentira le motiva para seguir gobernando.

Ministros tan representativos del «sanchismo» como Carmen Calvo o José Luis Ábalos están ausentes, y solo resurgen de vez en vez para promover proyectos políticos revanchistas que no son una prioridad contra la crisis que está asolando a España. Margarita Robles emerge como la ministra discordante, Irene Montero, como estrella de las revistas del corazón, y Alberto Garzón, inédito en una cartera de Consumo que jamás debió de dejar de ser una mera dirección general, solo habla para arremeter contra el sistema constitucional. El ministro de Justicia, fallido en cualquier gestión, solo compite con Fernando Grande-Marlaska, quemado desde el inicio de la crisis del coronavirus por su sectarismo e incapacidad para gestionar un departamento tan relevante. En Universidades, Manuel Castells no parece saber aún que es ministro y los rectores se siente por él abandonados. «Nos está dejando solos en la vuelta a clase», afirman, y reclaman un protocolo que actualice el último, comunicado hace tres meses. Rutilantes cargos de cuota como Darias o González Laya son irrelevantes a todos los efectos. En Turismo, no hay en Europa una ministra tan desorientada como Maroto, y en Hacienda o Economía, Montero y Calviño siguen manipulando los datos para atisbar brotes verdes inexistentes. En Ciencia, Duque es un perfecto desconocido en situación insostenible, y en Trabajo, Díaz ha hecho del engaño su día a día... La evaluación de cada cartera se resume en un despropósito que obliga a preguntarse para qué necesita el presidente del Gobierno más de una veintena de ministros en plena recesión. 

Sánchez miente a sabiendas, y pese a ello la sociedad no parece capaz de reaccionar. El miedo a una nueva fase trágica de la pandemia empieza a ser notable. Respecto al desplome económico, sobran las palabras y basta con que cada español se palpe el bolsillo. Pero en este clima, Sánchez aún sonríe con la prepotencia de quien sigue presumiendo de liderar una legislatura larga en lugar de asumir que España agoniza bajo su mando."

Insult and Intimidation

A while ago I heard from Diaz Villanueva something about the use of intimidation and insult, and I thought that in the roll of climate change things have already reached that level.  And that of course is an extension of the left's hold on institutions of modern society that it should never have had.  And why am I writing this?  Because the record on the left in the last 100 years has been awful..

And where am I going?  The fact is that insult and intimidation are our daily bread, and that of course will not allow a reasonable debate to find answers that make sense.  For my part, I have realized that I am old, and that it is not really worth fighting in this area, although I know that what they are proposing will go very wrong.

 So I leave them to continue living and, in a few decades, when they understand why they live in such miserable conditions, and if it is possible to speak freely (something that I doubt, because this has gone to hell and civilization is going towards a 1984 more  horrible than Orwell imagined) ... then try to teach young people that they must free themselves and never repeat the stupid things we did in the first decades of the 21st century.

A Scientist needs your help

A Scientist Needs Your Help (from Quillette.com)

Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov was a Soviet geneticist, botanist and agronomist, and collector of one of the world's largest seed banks, who was sentenced to death in July 1941 for defending scientific truths about genetics. While he escaped his death sentence, he lived the last twenty years of his life in a Soviet labour camp, disgraced and ostracised. His crime was to have criticised Lamarckian inheritance--the notion that changes to an organism in its lifetime can be passed on to offspring via genetics. Because Lamarckian inheritance emphasised the importance of the environment it was the favoured evolutionary theory among the socialists and communists of the time, and thanks to the advocacy of Trofim Lysenko, scientists who departed from this orthodoxy were shunned, persecuted, and in the case of Vavilov, sent to a gulag. When the siege of Leningrad occurred, Vavilov and a group of botanists who were holed up in a secret vault, famously chose to starve themselves before consuming their seeds, which they were preserving for the sake of humanity. While Vavilov died in obscurity, he is now recognised as one of the greatest Russian scientists of all time. Thankfully in 2020, geneticists are not forced to conform to pseudoscientific orthodoxies, no communist dictatorship exists in the West, and nobody is at risk of being sent to a labour camp to spend decades of their life in obscurity. Lysenkoism does not prevail, and scientists accept the reality of Mendelian genetics, most of the time. Nevertheless, ideas of environmental determinism do remain surprisingly persistent. Pseudoscientific ideas that deny biological or evolutionary truths are discussed in Quillette on a weekly basis. If you are reading this now, you will be familiar with them. The most recent example we have highlighted was the “controversy” surrounding JK Rowling for emphasising the reality of biological sex. Today, another scientist is being persecuted for discussing scientific truths. His name is Stephen Hsu, and he does not work in Russia, or China, but in the United States of America, at Michigan State University. He is being targeted by a Twitter mob and group of post-graduate students for his research and writing, and is being misrepresented and slandered as a “racist” and “sexist” despite condemning racism and sexism repeatedly in his public blog posts and interviews.

You can read the case against Professor Hsu here (keep in mind that many of these allegations are misrepresentations and exaggerations of his work) and Stephen's reply to the charges here. I have been informed that Professor Hsu’s job is at risk, and that he may lose his livelihood as early as this Friday. The mob demanding Hsu's defenestration is being led by a student named Kevin Bird, through his capacity as the President of Michigan State University’s Graduate Employee’s Union. Bird has said that he is targeting Hsu because he holds an administrative position as the Head of Research and Graduate Studies, yet no evidence of any bias in Hsu’s professional activities, let alone sexual or racial discrimination, has been presented, as far as I am aware. On the contrary, many women and people of colour who’ve worked with him have testified to his professional integrity. Bird describes himself as a "democratic socialist” and can be seen on social media celebrating arson and vandalism:

Several esteemed academics including Richard Haier and Robert Plomin have signed a counter-petition in defense of Stephen Hsu here. I am writing to you today, to ask that if you are an academic, could you please add your name to the counter-petition, to protect Stephen, but to also defend academic freedom and open inquiry, the foundational principles on which all scientific progress rests. --Claire Lehmann Editor-in-Chief

Letter from a black history professor

G. Floyd's murder is execrable but he is an example of non-discrimination.  He had a scholarship to the University.  He left his studies at the second year and embarked on a criminal path.  He did not take advantage of the opportunities that the system provided.

Here's a letter from a black history professor, who wrote it anonymously. The letter is being posted in several sites, but soon thereafter it's erased. 

Dear profs X, Y, Z

"I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I have met you both personally but do not know you closely, and am contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job, and likely all future jobs in my field.

In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity

of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them.

In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.

Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or 'Uncle Toms'. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders.

Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques.

The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence.

This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.

A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email.

Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates' undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black.

Comment on Climate Change and Politics

Your comment is awaiting moderation. 

HAS, I researched how the IPCC named RCP8.5 their “Business as Usual” (BAU) case. As you point out, they didn’t use the term in AR5, instead they began to use the term during press conferences and presentation of AR5 contents in late 2013 and early 2014. The BAU term became the standard they used in interviews and discussions, this was picked up by the media, and almost immediately we began to see papers referring to RCP8.5 as BAU.

This extended to training material used in universities, and to position statements written by scientific organizations in numerous countries. By 2015 almost all climate change papers referred to RCP8.5 as BAU, and this was also picked up by US government agencies during the Obama administration.

The period 2013 to 2018 saw a significant number of comments, articles and papers explaining RCP8.5 wasn’t BAU. I myself saturated the comments sections in newspapers and blogs with repetitive remarks about this error. In my case I came to conclude RCP8.5 wasn't BAU because of tendencies we observed: fossil fuel resources were increasingly more difficult to extract, competing technology prices were dropping, and the assumptions in RCP8.5 didn’t make sense (I’m not going to get into it here, but do remember the RCPs were scenarios prepared to meet an arbitrary IPCC request: they wanted four cases with four forcings, and the team preparing RCP8.5 had to include absurd system behavior to reach the 8.5 watts per m2).

We can’t blame the RCP8.5 authors because they were asked to deliver the target forcing. But I think a case can be made to accuse IPCC principals of scientific fraud for: 1. using the BAU term for RCP8.5 on a consistent basis, and 2. Failing to inform the scientific community and decision makers that RCP8.5 wasn’t really BAU.

I think we can also consider the ongoing (but increasingly feeble) defense of RCP8.5 as BAU without a corresponding correction by the IPCC as a sign that it can be considered a political organization with clear political goals, no regard for the quality of its products or their adequate use by the scientific community, and lacking in ethics to such an extent that it deserves to be shut down and replaced by a new organization outside of the UN structure.

The problems we see with the RCP8.5 use are a symptom of a very serious disease which has pervaded this field for decades, a disease which is now entering the realm of criminal behavior, because fake science is used to justify trillions of dollars in spending which are going to bring hefty profits to certain actors, and give geopolitical advantages to nations such as China and Russia (because they aren’t about to commit economic suicide cutting CO2 emissions to zero).

Criminal behavior can also be seen in the use of exaggerated alarmism to scare children, and put teenagers on the street asking for political changes (which conveniently demand the end of capitalism and parrot Neomarxist lines about climate justice, the white patriarchate, and etc). 

Scaring and traumatizing children using false information is a criminal act, and such abuse ought to stop.  But we already know that radical political movements will stop at nothing, and unfortunately the climate change problem is now a weapon used by Neomarxist radicals as a means to take over.

And when we combine the economic harm they will cause with their repressive and social engineering methods, we may be about to see the West fall in the hands of a political faction which may eventually rival Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Chavez when it comes to its innate evil nature.

Brazil Fires email by Hugo Fernando Maia Milan

I just wrote a post about it (inobio-manera.fcav.unesp.br/index.php/2019/08/28/...). I am including it here with more details. Hope it helps!

I am originally from the Amazon rainforest region (I grew up in the state of Rondônia). Brazilians strongly believe we should preserve the forest but, at the same time, bring economic development.

Before I dive-in into this discussion, I would like to clarify some common misconceptions:

a) I agree with Dallas Weaver, most of the O2 produced by the Amazon rainforest is consumed by the forest itself, as demonstrated by previous research (https://www.nature.com/articles/35002062, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12957). The liquid amount of O2 production from the Amazon rainforestis almost zero. We should revise the common misconception that the Amazon is the lung of the world. The main source of global liquid O2 are the blue algae in the ocean, which might be strongly affected by the radioactive waste (mostly from Nuclear Power Plants) dumped in the oceans by developed countries in the period from 1946 to 1993 (http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/jones-a2/).

b) I agree with Olger Linares. Most developed countries, which had almost completely deforested their territory, focus on slowing down developing countries. Instead of taking more impactful initiatives, such as reforesting their territory or fostering sustainable development, they invest on promoting farming in their countries and on fighting against any development of the developing countries. For instance, see the campaign "Farms here, forest there" (http://assets.usw.org/our-union/pulp-paper-forestry/farms-here-forests-there-report-5-26-10.pdf) supported by the American National Farmers Union.

c) As I discuss below, the Federal Government has strict laws regarding the protection of the ALL Brazilian forests. Burning is illegal in Brazil since 1998 (law 9.605/1998). In addition, President Jair Bolsonaro is doing everything under his power to protect the forest, even sending military forces to fight against illegal burning of the forest and to fight wildfires. This is the first year of his term and he is the ONLY president who demonstrated attitude towards sustainable developing the Amazon region and in protecting the forest. One curious fact is that several NGOs are seen in the Amazon rainforest region. In this region, people live sustainable with a strong connection with the forest. Curious enough is why we see so much NGOs in such an region with so much natural richness and not in the poorest Northeastern parts of Brazil. The Northeastern is marked by strong droughts but with rich underground water vessels. The potential impact of the NGOs on reducing inequality and improving life quality in the Northeastern is huge.

d) What we see are wildfires or small illegal fires. In total, the burning was estimated to be around 200 km2 (a 0.0036% of the total 5,500,000 km2 of Amazon rainforest region; brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2019/08/23/politica/..., en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest). 

The huge increase in fire we see in the media is on the number of fires, not in the burned area. In comparison, in 2018, the wildfire in California (which accounted for 21% of all territory burned in the United States; www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...) was ~40 times bigger (7664 km2; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_wildfires) and burned 5.74% of the California Forest (133,546 km2, roughly 2.4% of the size of the Amazon rainforest region; ucanr.edu/sites/forestry/California_forests).