Author Archives: rg

The Farce of Europe

Made obvious by the war in Ukraine

Writes the “Z-Man“:

Wars often define countries. The two industrial wars of the 20th century changed America from a republic to a global empire. Wars can also destroy countries. This is what happened with Europe. Those two wars plus the Cold War drained the vitality from Europe, reducing it to an economic zone, a dependency of the Global American Empire. That is obvious now.

The hope for Europe is that this reality is made so clear by Washington’s war on Russia that the farce can no longer be maintained. Perhaps some elements of the European political class grow tired of the humiliations they must endure and seek to regain their nations from the clutches of Washington. Perhaps the cost of war loosens the grip of Washington on the empire. Otherwise, that grip will squeeze what little life remains in Europe and the lights go out forever.

On Forgiveness and “Amnesty”

With regard to Covid measures and mandates, including the "vaccines"

Writes Bretigne Shaffer:

This conflict we are in, the same one that has torn apart families and cost people their jobs and had them pack up and move across the country, it is, at its foundation, a conflict between light and dark, good and evil. In this war, the side of darkness has certain strengths, certain weapons, and the side of the light has strengths, weapons. They are not the same. The dark uses lies, fear, and brute force. The weapons of the light are the inverse: Truth, fearlessness, and love.

[…]

What she [Emily Oster] is asking for is something we’ve all had quite enough of already, thank you. She is asking for a waiver of accountability for all who are responsible for what has been done to us these past three years: The mendacious mathematical models; the deliberate public fear-mongering; the rights violations, the forced closures of businesses, schools, churches; the forced isolation of some of society’s most vulnerable people; forcing masks on children; teaching children to fear other humans; the centralized suppression of effective treatment; the suppression of information about effective treatment… and of course, the coerced, experimental, medical interventions, and the suppression of information about the harm those interventions cause.

All of this is supposed to be “forgiven”, because “we didn’t know.” As if ignorance grants some sort of free pass for human-rights violations on a massive scale, because when you “don’t know” (they did know), the obvious response is raw, unbridled authoritarianism. As if people who have committed similar acts in the past have not faced criminal prosecution.

So here’s our dilemma: If society is to function at all, there needs to be accountability. We need to be able to hold people accountable for their actions, or we end up with a criminal class that can inflict harm on everyone else, free of consequence. Indeed, this is very much where we find ourselves at this moment in time, and if we cannot find ways to hold the perpetrators accountable, then we should only expect that things will continue to get worse.

[…]

So I just seek out – with an urgency – opportunities to stay connected to humanity. Whether it’s expressing appreciation for a shop assistant or call-center operator, or taking time to write up a review of the guys who delivered my washing machine, I recognize the urgency of maintaining the strength of those threads in our social fabric, those connections, however small they may seem.

When there are forces arrayed against human connection, forces that thrive and grow stronger the more we are divided against each other, the task of connecting, and of loving one another becomes all the more urgent. We don’t have to forgive the unforgivable – or anything at all, if we’re unable to. And we certainly don’t have to abandon the endeavor of holding criminals accountable for their crimes. But our capacity for love is what separates us from the darkness. It is one of the only weapons we have to fight against it. We need to take it seriously.

Pro-vaxxer tacitly admits: They cannot find an error in Norman Fenton’s paper

Which shows a strong correlation between vaccination rate and excess deaths

Steve Krisch’s newsletter.

Also, related to this, Dr. Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH writes:

Almost everyday in the news is another reported case of sudden, unexpected cardiac death. The vaccination status is carefully concealed in the report and any mention of past SARS-CoV-2 immunization appears to be scrubbed from the internet. Families maintain an airtight silence on a simple medical query—did they take a COVID-19 vaccine? Yes or No? Prior to COVID-19 vaccination, the usual causes of death were almost always known antemortem, and were roughly 40% cardiovascular, 40% cancer, and 20% other causes. Chaves and colleagues have shown these proportions have been dramatically shifted to sudden cardiac death.

Net Zero Will Lead to the End of Modern Civilisation, Says Top Scientist

Article in The Daily Sceptic.

Excerpt:

In Manheimer’s view, the partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners, “truly is an unholy alliance”. The climate industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everyone. “We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act,” he added.

Perhaps one of the best voices to cast doubt on an approaching climate crisis, suggests the author, is Professor Emeritus Richard Lindzen of MIT, one of the world’s leading authorities on geological fluid motions:

What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.

Paul Johnson, 1928 – 2023

The journalist and 'amateur' historian was a 'true giant', writes Tom Woods

Only a couple of weeks ago I finished reading Paul Johnson‘s monumental book “Modern Times“, on the history of post-WW1 20th century. A true eye-opener. Tom Woods recommended it to his readers about two years ago. Gary North does the same at the end of his last book, “Biblical Historiography”. Johnson died yesterday.

Writes Tom Woods:

What an odd and most unfortunate coincidence.

Just yesterday I wrote to you about the academic snobs who look down on amateur historians who dare to write works of history without being “trained.”

And trust me, as someone who would know: the difference in “training” between a university-educated historian and you is precisely zero. You are capable of reading, and being discriminating with sources, just as much as any of them are, and there are no secret “techniques” they teach us that separate us from you.

But on to the coincidence: today we lost a great historian, Paul Johnson, whose books taught me so much, and who, while not always right, understood the central drama of the age.

Johnson, who was 94, would be considered an “amateur” historian.

But unlike so many of our official historians, Johnson challenged sacred cows, was enormously prolific, and wrote in a way that kept you engaged rather than putting you to sleep.

In the 1970s Johnson had an ideological conversion away from the left, and he stayed converted for the rest of his life.

My favorite of his many published works is Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Eighties (since expanded into a larger edition that includes the nineties, but in that section you have to endure Johnson’s disappointing and misplaced foreign-policy views).

I’ve told the story before, but I found out about this book as a college freshman, when a fellow student, sensing a kindred spirit, urged me to read it. I would discover, he said, that the historians’ heroes were generally creeps. I was not disappointed.

Another great one, and a book hated by all the right people, is Intellectuals. There Johnson examined some of the key thinkers of our time, who had a habit of devising, from their armchairs, grandiose plans for the human race that could be implemented only by violence. (Not to mention, most of these people turn out to have been scumbags in their personal lives, as Johnson amply documents.)

Johnson was also an artist and art aficionado, and his Art: A New History is a massive volume filled with the kind of surprising and controversial judgments we find in the rest of his works.

Any of these three books will fascinate you. They’re brimming with anecdotes and quotations you’ve never heard, idiosyncratic tangents you’ll consistently enjoy, and fearless dissent from the standard narrative.

Paul Johnson, requiescat in pace.

What Does the Science Say?

On climate change. And why it is so corrupted.

Jordan Peterson talks with Dr. Richard Lindzen.

This interview with Michael Crichton is also interesting. (There’s no date to it but from what he says I guess it was done in 2007. He died in November 2008.) Crichton makes the point that from all his research on the matter, looking into scientific papers etc., he can surmise that CO2 is likely causing some warming, but not catastrophically so. Nevertheless, we should be reducing our CO2 output. However, he emphasises: This is happening anyway and will continue happening as technology progresses. Trying to crowbar and accelerate this process with government force is unlikely to improve things and likely to cause huge amounts of harm elsewhere.