Not for the first time, there are two empirical realities offered below. The first is an attempt by the FTs, WSJs, CNNs, BBCs and Bloombergs to suggest that something unsustainably abnormal doesn’t threaten anyone; the second shows the same media set insisting that a normal seasonal cull is a threat to our species unequalled in history. Both propositions are fantasy, both are being put forward by the same tiny minority, and both have the same goal: the destruction of democratic, responsible freedom in favour of totalitarian élitism. The Slog argues that the fact of Coronaphobia should be accepted, and the dictatorship vigorously opposed.
Quelle surprise! Wall street and the banks have been at it again: ignoring procedures, blind-siding legislation, and playing Goforit with other people’s money. Hedge Funds are supposed to fill in form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) when they have more than a certain sum under management….along with what credit/debt arrangements and liabilities they have.
The liquidity nervousness of the last few weeks, however, has revealed not so much what the hedges have as what they haven’t. And what they haven’t comes under the key heading of “been doing” – viz, um, filling in 13F. As it were.
Shurely not? Er….decidedly so. 13F is supposed to kick in at $100 million. Now it seems that some funds had 100 billion under management, but didn’t want to bother the SEC which, as we all know, is busy enough already. Especially as 90% of that sum had been collatoralised with loans from major US banks….an anomaly the banks chose to disregard as a minor detail.
As a result, the top five US banks are holding $2.66 trillion in stocks, and nobody has a clue whether the stocks are blue chip….or overleveraged trash. Sorry, sorry: sub-prime. Must get my technical terms right.
Remember derivatives?
Quelle surprise! The New York Times is lying about Covid. Again. Two excerpts from its piece about how, like, todallee orrrrsum C19 is:
- ‘Covid-19 has now claimed more than half a million lives in the United States. The total number of Covid-19 deaths so far is on track to surpass the toll of the 1918 pandemic, which killed an estimated 675,000 nationwide’. Comment: In 1918, the US population was almost exactly a third of what it is today. To even approach the size of The Great Flu, Covid would need to “kill” 1.4 million Americans a year. By Fauci’s own admission, the PCR positive testing overclaim is so large, the system is effectively useless as an aid to policy. And the NYT stats take no account of died from and with as a delineator. The 1918 pandemic killed people of every age and was thus far less demographically biased. The Times piece is classic legerdemain, in that it talks of rates, but quotes only raw numbers.
- ‘According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 10 percent of the deaths last year can be directly attributed to Covid-19, which overtook other leading causes of death — like chronic lower respiratory diseases and unintentional injuries, such as car accidents and overdose deaths — to become the third biggest killer, after heart disease and cancer. Comment: How to shoot yourself in the foot – ‘According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’. Are you kidding? According to Josef Goebbels, all Jews are Communists. According to Charlie Manson, if it feels good you should do it. According to Guy Verhofstadt, the EU is “suffused with the best values of liberty and democracy”. No, I wouldn’t buy a used car from Anthony Fauci. I wouldn’t buy “Today is Saturday” after 00.01 am on a Saturday from Fauci. ‘The third biggest killer after heart disease and cancer’…..Correct. Check out the real numbers: 350,000 dead “from Covid19” [see Pt 1 above to gauge inaccuracy] plays 700,000 from heart disease, 600,000 from cancer. Oh – and one unknown: how many more avoidable cancer deaths have taken place in public health services thanks to the Establishment obsession with a glorified flu virus?
I have one main worry about The Slog at the moment: from time to time, it is getting bogged down in the detail of evidence to show what claptrap is being churned out by political and media whores. The crossroads to which I refer in the header to this post is that point on the Great Journey where one has to ask, “I am 86 posts to the good on this topic, but if the battle for common sense on Covid19 is now lost, should I not recognise that?”
I hereby accept that reality. Getting vaccinated so you can go on holiday or to the pub is a decision so lamentably untrue to one’s self, I concede defeat in the face of the factory-wired short term gratification needs of Homo sapiens. I have always said that the end result of assuming human perfection (or pretending so to do) will be dystopia.
But this isn’t me doing a Pontius Pilate impression – I never liked doing Pilates exercises anyway, and as for that hand-washing OCD thing….well, what can I say?
Rather, I’m abiding by the wisdom of “Lose the battle in order to in the war”.
The battle for Covid reality is over. The battle for open-minded liberty is about to begin.
In a recent Slogpost, I wrote as follows:
‘Better to be ready early than despairing too late. My view is that we have no more than 9-10 weeks to put something together; and as things stand, this isn’t the medium in which to scope things out. Peaceful resistance now needs to go from public national complaint to private grassroots plans….and I have no doubt at all that the same applies in the US, in Australasia, and much of mainland Europe.
To help in this endeavour, you need to do two things: first, get yourself a protonmail account to ensure that the surveillance State can’t see the content; and second, write to me on saulbollocks@protonmail.com.
The push-back starts here’
The response to this appeal has been gratifying – but one can never have too many colleagues in the fight for Civil Rights. If you want to get involved in this, the offer is still open. Members of Common Purpose need not apply.
From the Slog archives….how a post from two years ago came to pass
The Slog 