18 Comments
User's avatar
John Carter's avatar

Season 1: A New Right

Season 2: The Bardak Strikes Back

Season 3: The Return of the Marcionites

Expand full comment
Frantic's avatar

I don't think the Zman will be happy to be labelled a conservative by now.

He is widely read among those circles though. He writes for Taki, Ann Coulter retweets him and probably his goal is to eventually get quoted live by Tucker Carlson.

Presumingly that's why he can just describe and investigate the current societal rot in terms of the "how" (the managerial class), rather than the "who". The managerial thing is at the root of the "how" we get exiled from polite society - and also at the root of the more immediate "why" (because managers have to defend the creed). But it fails to account for many things: why the managerial thing described by Hampl's article is in place, why there are these specific taboos in place and not others, and so on.

There has got to be a cabal determining what's allowable and what's taboo, and how to let the creed trickle down to subordinates via the managerial society, to the masses via the media, to the dissidents via the secret police etc. The Zman, Jared Taylor do good analyses, but are notoriously reticent to talk about the very top of the chain.

I don't think at all you are larping with this blog, your views have been coherent in time. But I can't help not to notice, in jest, that you are the ultimate rootless cosmopolitan: you can't get citizenship from the places you feel you belong no matter how much you try, while the only passport you got is that one you really don't want.

This below is interesting and revealing about the real power of the managerial elite. Boris Johnson is at the top amongst them, and yet:

"TOWARDS the end of 2020, editors of major UK media outlets were summoned, one by one, and not for the first time, to individual briefings at Downing Street.

Apparently, all the meetings followed the same format. Each editor was shown into Boris Johnson’s office, where Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance gave a presentation about how a devastating next wave of ‘Covid’ was going to kill 500,000 people and cripple the NHS.

The usual bogus decontextualised data and ludicrously misleading graphs were waved in their faces. Then the two witch-doctors slithered out of the room and Johnson instructed the editors to get behind a winter lockdown.

At this point, one editor decided to interrogate the Prime Minister. He said something along these lines: ‘Come on, [...] There’s no justification for another lockdown – why are you doing this?’

Boris Johnson adopted a haunted and helpless expression, gestured towards the door through which Whitty and Vallance had just exited and said: ‘I’ve got to do what they tell me.’ "

https://www.arkhaven.com/comics/comedy/bob-moran/all-the-wrong-questions

Expand full comment
Blissex's avatar

«Each editor was shown into Boris Johnson’s office, where Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance gave a presentation about how a devastating next wave of ‘Covid’ was going to kill 500,000 people and cripple the NHS. [...] gestured towards the door through which Whitty and Vallance had just exited and said: ‘I’ve got to do what they tell me.’ "»

That to me seems complete bullshit, because Whitty and Vallance had very clearly recommended in March-April 2020 to do zero-COVID (test-trace-isolate), and the Conservatives led by Johnson scratched. For the obvious reason that it was "collectivist" to do a public health programme. So when Boris was saying ‘I’ve got to do what they tell me’ it was just an excuse that he had to follow "the science". In that situation since zero-COVID was politically unacceptable the least bad alternative the science could offer was to isolate *everybody* (lockdown) instead of just the tested and traced.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/england-coronavirus-testing-has-not-risen-fast-enough-science-chief

“Sir Patrick Vallance says testing needs to be done at scale to find outbreaks and isolate people [...] Sir Patrick Vallance’s comments echo those of Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, who said a week ago that Germany “got ahead” in testing people for Covid-19 and that the UK needed to learn from that.”

The resulting death rates per 1m for half-baked lockdowns:

- Peru 6,291, Hungary 4,661

- Poland 2,997, USA 2,905, UK 2,845, Italy 2,679

- Iran 1,592, Switzerland 1,554, Germany 1,539, Israel 1,126

Those for some variant of zero-COVID at least for a while:

- Finland 539, Vietnam 434, Norway 433

- Thailand 345, South Korea 287

- Singapore 228, Australia 227, Japan 222

- New Zealand 53, Taiwan 36, China 3.24

Expand full comment
Frantic's avatar

I interpreted that quote I reported above - about Boris Johnson meekly "following orders" on the subject of the second lockdown - as further proof of the massive engineered hoax that was (is?) the covid hysteria affair. As referred by Lukashenko, contrary to Johnson he refused to abide by the blackmailing from the WHO heralds of doom, pressing him to institute lockdowns. He faced an attempted coup as a retort.

Bob Moran tells the story using his own name and surname, so why not believe him.

Besides, I am not very interested in the bean counting related to the Covid issue. I am tempted to observe that it must be an age thing.

I don't see how these statistics could possibly be of any interest, since the tests are unreliable as they give too many false positives. Plus the number of positive cases depends on the number of tests administered. And the number of "Covid-related deaths" depend on the number of positive cases. And in all countries there were incentives for the doctors to identify as many Covid cases as they could possibly justify with the tests. So all these numbers are utterly meaningless.

They have not even been able to identify a common course for the disease. You know what you face with the flu, the common cold, the measles ... but with Covid? Headaches? Loss of sensitivity in the tongue? Ridiculous.

All in all, Boris Johnson may have had to play cuck on the Covid issue, but I think he managed to stop a lot of the insanity that happened in most countries on the continent. I think he was tanked because he didn't go full perfunctory-vaccine. Being much more fanatical on the Ukraine issue didn't help him.

Anyway he will be sorely missed, he is head and shoulders above anyone who was supposed to come after him, especially the new hag-in-chief who made a fool of herself already a while ago, when Lavrov tricked her to declare that Rostov and Belgorod are in Ukraine.

Expand full comment
Rurik Skywalker's avatar

>They have not even been able to identify a common course for the disease. You know what you face with the flu, the common cold, the measles ... but with Covid? Headaches? Loss of sensitivity in the tongue? Ridiculous.

Viruses are a hoax, dude.

Expand full comment
Frantic's avatar

I can't be bothered to check on all conspiracies.

Expand full comment
Blissex's avatar

«Besides, I am not very interested in the bean counting related to the Covid issue. I am tempted to observe that it must be an age thing»

All those oldies who died 5-10-20 earlier than otherwise may not be entirely a mere "statistic" (in Stalin's sense of the difference between a tragedy and a statistic).

«And the number of "Covid-related deaths" depend on the number of positive cases»

The COVID-related deaths matches quite well the number of excess deaths:

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&uniformYAxis=0&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=aged_65_older&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=USA~AUS~JPN~NZL~KOR~CAN~TWN~GBR~CHN~POL~NOR~IRL~ISL~DEU~FIN~THA~SWE~ITA~CUB~DNK~FRA~HKG~SGP&Metric=Deaths+and+excess+mortality

Also for the UK an interesting detail analysis of excess deaths:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1562004612172873728

In particular these graphs:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FazlNKCXwAEc9Fl?format=jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FazmEdgX0AA77Zf?format=jpg

Expand full comment
Frantic's avatar

I see that the "usual bogus decontextualised data and ludicrously misleading graphs" keep being waved in my face.

You seem to accede to Unz's syllogism:

Premises:"There has been a Covid epidemic for 2 years"; "There have been excessive deaths for 2 years compared to before".

Conclusion: "Covid is the cause of the excessive deaths".

I think there is a fallacy, given that Covid is not even understood what it is. The cause of the excessive deaths is probably connected with the deterioration of treatment for all ailments and illnesses other than Covid (first aid against strokes, tumor prevention and check visits, etc), caused by the focus on Covid imposed on Health Services all around the world. In addition to that, factor in the lockdown-related debilitating effects of not being able to see anyone for ailing old people with already weak immune systems.

So there's that, and the fact that for instance, even traffic accident victims with a broken neck got tested for covid and haveb been chalked off as covid victims when the unreliable (because marred by false positives) results came out positive.

The authorities and blue chip twitterites can submerge us with statistics all they want, doesn't change the fact that the data on covid deaths are totally unreliable. Like, complete fiction.

Only people past a certain age seem to take this stuff seriously on the internet, this is what I alluded to in my previous message. Might it be that in the absence of religion, they need to stave off the Grim Reaper with Data and Science, each occasion it rears out its ugly head in everyday life? That behind the Covid hysteria, there are materialistic boomers glimpsing the spectre of Death?

Expand full comment
Blissex's avatar

“Only people past a certain age seem to take this stuff seriously on the internet [...] need to stave off the Grim Reaper with Data and Science, each occasion it rears out its ugly head in everyday life?”

I have a different theory and a more merciful guess about people who think COVID was a lot of noise about a small detail (or even a complete hoax):

* Bad ordinary flu variants can result in excess death rates up to 0.1%-0.2%, and while this overloads for example the UK NHS when it happens, most people take it as something unremarkable.

* Serious plagues result in excess death rates of 10-20%, and in that case people utterly panic to the point of boarding up houses with infected people and burning them down.

* COVID lies in between (logarithmically), with excess death rates potentially in the 1-2% range. For some people an illness that at worst has a survival rate of 98-99% is as unremarkable as the ordinary flu.

Unfortunately there a few things that are very wrong with the idea that a 98-99% survival rate is business as usual:

* For some categories of people the survival rate is much, much lower. The lives of these people matter too, to themselves and to others. It is mostly people with a weak health already. Selective euthanasia by COVID?

* Death is pretty bad, but of the people who did not join the excess death statistics, many had long and bad sick periods, and long term complications. Tough COVID luck for them?

* Most medical systems do not have much spare capacity, and cope badly with the ordinary flu when it results in excess death rates of 0.1% to 0.2%, something that can be 10 times worse can be devastating. At the peak of excess deaths in some countries there were severe capacity problems in morgues and cemeteries. Exclude COVID patients from the medical system?

As to the latter point, as an example the UK NHS in 2019 had roughly 1.5m hospital admissions per year out of around 65m people, a rate of around 2.3%. An extra load of 1% of the population (even if only sickness not deaths...) is a pretty huge surge.

Expand full comment
Frantic's avatar

Well, I observed that authors and commentators endlessly pontificating about Covid and death statistics on the internet tend to belong to a certain age-bracket. Another anecdotal observation that can be made is that younger people can be heard or read ranting more on the topic of the lethal after-effects of the vaccination.

Apart from grifter commentators riding twitter trends, I think these statements are fairly true. I prefer to form categories for my concepts based on the true/false dichotomy. Moral/immoral or right/wrong interest me less, or I tend to conflate them with true/false anyway, ture being the good choice, false the bad. You are trying to pass me off as cynic, but that's not the case, I have never being dismissive about the deaths of these people.

> * COVID lies in between (logarithmically) [0.1-.2% and 10-20%], with excess death rates potentially in the 1-2% range.

I am privy with logarithmic representation. To say that 1% is in between 0.1 and 10% *logarithmically* is so sophistic it's even beyond the "usual bogus decontextualised data and ludicrously misleading graphs" of Bob Moran. 1% is much closer to 0. than 10%. I had higher expectations from someone who reasons on moral points.

Expand full comment
Blissex's avatar

«Conclusion: "Covid is the cause of the excessive deaths".

I think there is a fallacy, given that Covid is not even understood what it is.»

If we assume that excess death stats are not a hoax, broadly speaking they have two intrinsic properties:

* They are very different over time, both as to previous times, and across the 2020-2022 period.

* They are very, very different across countries, very low in some countries and rather high in others.

There are factors of 10-100 (1,000% to 10,000%) involved that cannot be hand-waved away like differences of 10% or even 100%. Such huge differences are a big deal.

These are intrinsic properties and do no involve any claim about COVID, they are just there.

The statistics about excess deaths also have three other properties that not intrinsic:

* They approximately match reported COVID deaths over time.

* They approximately match reported COVID deaths across countries.

* They also approximately match the COVID strategy ("let it rip", "half baked lockdowns", "zero COVID") adopted by governments of countries with somewhat similar demographics.

Those three properties do not necessarily mean that COVID "caused" the deaths reported for COVID, or COVID "caused" excess deaths in general, and there is indeed no causal proof that each and every excess death was caused by COVID modulated by the government COVID strategy.

There could be other factors at work, and the correlation with COVID and COVID strategy could be co-causation by other factors or simple coincidence.

But given that before mass vaccination (march 2020 to march 2021) the excess death rates were rather significant in many countries (up to 1-2% per year), their properties cannot be just dismissed, and correlation and coincidence are rather suggestive. Perhaps the right thing to do was instead "we are not fully sure what is causing all these excess deaths, let's do nothing until we are fully sure".

«doesn't change the fact that the data on covid deaths are totally unreliable. Like, complete fiction.»

Well, the question is whether the both the COVID deaths and excess deaths statistics, which are both very different across countries and across time, and are similar, are both complete fiction.

The question then is whether there is not just a COVID hoax involving dozens of governments reporting fictional COVID deaths very different by country and time, but also reporting fictional total deaths also very different by country and time, without a single whistleblower.

And if the total deaths 2020-2022 are not a hoax and have been reported as reliably as in previous years, what caused the huge changes across time and countries in 2020 to 2022?

«The cause of the excessive deaths is probably connected with the deterioration of treatment for all ailments and illnesses other than Covid»

That probably happened in the long term in some measure, but curiously high excess death rates happened also in countries with a "who cares?" approach to COVID and low excess death rates also happened in countries with a "zero COVID" ultra-strict approach.

Expand full comment
Frantic's avatar

> Well, the question is whether the both the COVID deaths and excess deaths statistics, which are both very different across countries and across time, and are similar, are both complete fiction.

I have only referred to Covid deaths, and they are bogus given tests are unreliable. Bogus not at the high level of a conspiracy of conniving governments across the planet, but more diffusely directly on the field where medics and hospital personnel had every incentive to record each death as Covid-related.

Regarding the excess-death statistics: this hit mainly the old and frail left more vulnerable by the disruption caused by the anti-Covid measures. They catch what amounts to a more virulent strand of the seasonal flu, the system overreacts, they get transferred to the hospital, where they are quarantined and then not treated adequately, resulting in their demise.

I still remember, around at the time of the beginning of the craze, that the news were showing sensational reports of columns of military trucks advancing slowly and solemnly in the night, allegedly filled with dead from Covid. I cannot believe there was not a hint of slightly exaggeration from media intentionally engaged in scaremongering.

Expand full comment
Surviving the Billionaire Wars's avatar

Patience, grasshopper. The mills of time grind exceedingly slow, but they grind exceedingly fine.

Twill all be dust in due time.

"NATO can keep providing equipment for them."

Not for much longer. Not only are we stripping our active military of weapons to send to Ukraine, we are now also buying them back on the dark web. Things I didn't foresee. Couldn't even imagine. ⚫

It's also now in mainstream news that mic companies are having a hard time filling orders due to lack of critical raw materials, parts, supply chain breaks, etc. Which is as I have been saying for months would happen. 🔮

Expand full comment
Billy Thistle's avatar

"Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini met a trans woman called Maryam Khatoon Molkara, who had been thrown into a psychiatric institution and forcibly injected with male hormones. Moved by her story, he issued a fatwa allowing the procedure, which a cleric later compared to changing wheat into bread. Today the government even helps with the cost. " (The Economist)

Apparently the operation has been legal since the late 80s in Iran. My mind is blown. Don't really know what to say. Rolo understands the religio-political logic. I don't think I do.

Rather than oppose trans, we're to promote it because it leads to a better appearance of conforming to the binary. One assumes butch homos and femme lesbians would not be pressured into nor offered subsidized trans services, as their public demeanor does not transgress binary culture. Unfair and inconsistent? Who cares? says the fascifist (a vlogger I like).

My position has been that private gay/trans behavior is permissible, but should not be promoted - no gay/trans pride displays or provocations.

Expand full comment
RegretLeft's avatar

Speaking of Zarathustra and a "a WWI-style war " - did you know that early in WWI the Germans printed a vast paperback edition (.25 Mil?) of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and distributed them to frontline troops? So? - I dunno - maybe time to give Zarathustra another chance to speak? Maybe the glacier will shift one way or another? Or maybe not, it's really a crappy book, I much prefer the saner, early NIetzsche - try Human all too Human.

And did you know that recently, a forensic MD published a monograph that denies that Nietzsche died of syphilis as is near universally thought. Symptom set doesn't match syphilis (MD claims); much more likely was a benign brain tumor slowly growing over 2 or 3 decades. All the more reason to listen to Zarathustra again?

Expand full comment
Rurik Skywalker's avatar

I meant the actual Zarathustra.

Expand full comment