Reader’s Links for January 18, 2022

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

58 Replies to “Reader’s Links for January 18, 2022”

  1. He vaccine narrative is crumbling. We need signs up everywhere drilling this into the heads of those who perpetuate it. Eventually everyone will see it’s true.

    • Yeah. I have been thinking about why Youtube allows the CR bypass of specific posters for Tucker.

      If you search Youtube for Tucker Carlson, the first full page of results is usually trashing him in every way. But some livestreams get through and I try and watch. Often the guy posting them inserts dump pics of Trump in the stream, and for sure in the poster frame for the stream.

      Sometimes a dancing trump video is inset.

      I generally post from Free Speech Warrior, who our own Marcus1976 introduced us to. He uploads the whole show as it was broadcast most days, without any editorializing.

      I don’t know why the guy inserts the Trump stuff. For all I know its Google itself who does it. It isn’t like they couldn’t stop all broadcasts after all. They know exactly what happens on their platform.

  2. An MIT-educated doctor who prescribed COVID patients Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine had her medical license suspended and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

    Maine’s Board of Licensure in Medicine voted to pull Dr Meryl Nass’ medical license for 30 days after accusing her of circulating “misinformation” about COVID-19.

    Health officials asserted that Nass “constitutes an immediate jeopardy to the health and physical safety of the public who might receive her medical services” as a result of her procuring anti-viral drugs to treat COVID.

    The medical board voted to suspend Nass after receiving just two complaints that she was posting false information on her blog and on Twitter.

    https://summit.news/2022/01/18/mit-educated-doctor-ordered-to-undergo-psych-evaluation-after-prescribing-ivermectin/

  3. James O’Keefe Gives Update On Why The FBI Raided His Home (Timcast IRL with James O’Keefe and Andy Ngo plus a really smart woman whose name escapes me)

  4. Biden’s Bounty on Your Life: Hospitals’ Incentive Payments for COVID-19
    by Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D. – November 17, 2021
    https://aapsonline.org/bidens-bounty-on-your-life-hospitals-incentive-payments-for-covid-19/

    Dr. Paul Marik (FLCCC’s founding member) on Remdesivir at the Nashville COVID Summit
    Uncensored Storm – Published on January 2, 2022
    https://rumble.com/vrscwh-dr.-marik-on-remdesivir-at-the-nashville-covid-summit.html

  5. It was a landmark hearing for Ontario. Four doctors — Rochagne Kilian, Mary O’Connor, Mark Trozzi and Patrick Phillips — had been scheduled to appear to fight legal proceedings brought by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) late last year.

    Trozzi, O’Connor and Kilian have been accused by the CPSO of failing to comply with investigations into allegations they issued false medical exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine. Phillips, the CPSO says, is threatening to re-release a tranche of confidential documents on Twitter.

    But on January 7, only O’Connor, and her lawyer Michael Swinwood, showed up on Zoom to argue their case.

    “Alright. Um, ah, okay,” Morgan said, after being informed that Trozzi and Phillips’ lawyer, Michael Alexander, had decided to “withdraw” and would not be appearing at the hearing, despite CPSO counsel telling Alexander this was not allowed under civil procedure.

    Conversation then turned to Kilian. Her lawyer, Rocco Galati, had been hospitalized and was in intensive care with an undisclosed illness, resulting in her case being rescheduled.

    https://globalnews.ca/news/8517353/canada-doctors-covid-vaccine-disinformation/

  6. AFGHANISTAN – Newly-trained Muslim terrorists graduate

    Dozens of Taliban soldiers from the First Brigade of the 290th Al-Fatah Corps brandish rifles during graduation ceremony

    • Is Miley the one who is destroying the US military and facilitating the communist take over of the US?

      https://youtu.be/NB6LPIYlteo

      Yup. Clapping should be reserved for when he gets hung for treason. Covid is hardly punishment enough for him.

  7. Ministry of Exploding Muslims:

    January 6 2022 Suicide bombers given key role in new Taliban army
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/afghanistan-suicide-bombers-given-key-role-in-new-taliban-army-8rglv020t
    The Taliban are establishing a battalion of suicide attackers to serve in a new national army in Afghanistan.
    Zabihullah Mujahid, the group’s spokesman, announced plans for a special forces unit of suicide bombers hours after the defence ministry said it would set up a national army of 100,000 fighters. “Our mujahidin who are martyrdom brigades will also be part of the army but they will be special forces,” Mujahid told Radio Free Europe. “These forces will be under the control the Ministry of Defence and will be used for special operations.”
    A photograph from inside the ministry showed a sign above a desk reading “Office of the Martyrdom Brigade.”
    Suicide bombings were shunned as un-Islamic under the previous Taliban administration, which ended in 2001, but
    [..]

  8. JAN 17 2022 – GERMANY – MAGDEBURG – Anti-COVID Restrix Protesters Tussle With Police at Illegal Demo

    Protesters detained as scuffles erupt at massive illegal protest in Magdeburg against COVID measures


  9. global news – Canada deploying special forces to Ukraine as tensions with Russia escalate

    Global News has learned Canada is now sending a small group of special forces to Ukraine.

    The small group of elite Canadian soldiers are reportedly in Ukraine to look at options to support the Ukranian government, as well as pre-planning for a possible evacuation of Canadian diplomatic personnel if necessary.

    Sources tell Global News the deployment is also part of an attempt by NATO to deter Russian aggression in Ukraine.

  10. The Telegraph-The curse of Covid: can any leader survive the pandemic?

    The political future may well belong to those who can restore the liberties that lockdown measures tore away

    If Boris Johnson wanted to console himself, he might say he’s far from the only politician having deep post-Covid political problems. No one, not even Keir Starmer, is immune from scrutiny of their behaviour in lockdown – and almost no leader, anywhere in the world, can claim their pandemic strategy was a success. Everyone gambled – and to a greater or lesser extent, everyone lost. Now, the political reckoning begins.

    From Australia to Israel, most of those who were in power at the start of the pandemic have either lost power – or look as if they soon will. Lockdowns brought agony but not the benefits that their advocates promised. Imperial’s Neil Ferguson predicted the lockdown he recommended could reduce deaths to about 20,000 – up to two-thirds of whom, he said, might have died within a year anyway. The death toll now stands at seven times this figure and after Britain has suffered some of the strictest, longest lockdowns in the world.

    In Sweden, at the other extreme, the Prime Minister who fended off lockdowns lost power after a coalition power struggle. Stefan Löfven’s restraint meant Sweden ended up with no diktats and the least economic damage in Europe in 2020. But there was no political dividend for him. The deaths that did happen – half of which were in woefully-unprotected care homes – were not forgiven. Löfven’s prize for keeping Covid out of the headlines was to be scuppered by mundane issues like rent control.

    The world over, it’s hard to find any leader who can genuinely claim their Covid policy was a success. It’s all too easy to find leaders who have panicked and abandoned their previously-vaunted principles. “We’re not a country that makes vaccination mandatory,” said Justin Trudeau. But his government is now exploring it, a logical segue for a Canada which imposed draconian no-jab, no-job policies for public transport staff. Québec is even proposing a tax for the unjabbed. The approval rate for how Trudeau handled the pandemic was 59 per cent this time last year; it’s now 41 per cent.

    Australia is now abandoning its ‘zero Covid’ policy but Scott Morrison, its Prime Minister, is struggling to take his country with him. His decision to close off from the rest of the world came at huge social cost and some of the longest lockdowns in the world. Australia’s death toll was the lowest in the G20 and it’s now reopening, to a far-milder omicron variant. Going from ‘zero Covid’ to what he used to disparage as ‘let it rip’ seems to be a change that’s too dizzying for many Australians to cope with. His coalition government is now eight points behind in the opinion polls, with an election due in May at the latest.

    The original promise of Antipodean zero Covid strategies was to sit tight, wait for vaccines to arrive and then reopen to the world. Once, this looked crazy. Then, it seemed vindicated when Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna managed to come up with jabs that tested between 76 and 95 per cent effective. They’d get jabbing, then reopen: Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, said last year would be “the year of the vaccine”. She was as good as her word: in both New Zealand and Australia, 92 cent of those eligible have now been double-jabbed.

    But we now know that vaccine protection wanes quite quickly, hence the need for boosters. Omicron now dodges AstraZeneca’s jab, and two jabs of Pfizer are not much better: UK tests show they are just 20 per cent effective against infection from omicron after 15 weeks. So the Australians and New Zealanders who made such progress with the double jab find themselves vulnerable to a variant that needs boosters (taken by 18 per cent of Australians and 14 per cent of New Zealanders). Even booster protection wanes: to about 40-50 per cent after 10 weeks, according to British studies.

    This is why endemic Covid, not zero-Covid, is looking like the only sensible option. But the journey to this conclusion is a political Via Dolorosa for those leaders who spent two years espousing zero Covid strategies. Ardern was lucky to have had her re-election during the pandemic, in a New Zealand where 80 per cent of voters backed her strategy. That fell to 60 per cent last October and stands at 46 per cent now. She is still two years away from a general election – so has time to recover.

    Joe Biden is unlikely to stand again. He was elected president on a promise to “shut down the virus” which always was a stretch. He failed, and ended up with threatening no-jab, no-job policies – which have been divisive and ineffective. Americans are losing their fear of the virus: now, for the first time, the number of those disapproving of Biden’s Covid policy exceeded those who back it. His approval ratings have now fallen faster than any leader in modern American history.

    He is in trouble for all kinds of reasons: the Afghan debacle, inflation and more – but Covid is proving the crowning issue. His Covid policy is now backed by only a minority of Americans. Micah Roberts, a Republican pollster, summed it up: “As goes Covid, so goes the Biden presidency, and that’s really proving to be quite true.” Biden’s staggering borrow-and-spend package was billed as a response to the pandemic but there was always a risk of pouring the fuel of borrowed money on the fire of a rebounding American economy. Inflation is now higher in America than at any time in the last 39 years.

    In Ireland, Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s lockdowns have not really paid dividends. The curfews, the curbs on weddings are all still in place – in a country where the omicron variant is still spreading fast, but posing nothing like the threat of the original strains. Sinn Féin, the official opposition, is now 10 points ahead in the polls. Martin needn’t fight an election for three years, so he has time to recover. But a Covid effect can quite clearly be seen.

    Those who fought elections during the height of the panic benefited from the phenomenon of rallying behind the flag and the leader in time of crisis. Mark Rutte’s record on Covid persuaded Dutch voters to overlook his other shortcomings and re-elect him last year – but that was in March, where the sense of emergency had not abated. Talks to put togther his coalition took 271 days.

    The Hong Kong flu of 1968 inflicted a horrific death toll, but it was not compounded by the economic, social and public health damage from lockdowns. The difference now is that we have the technology to track new pathogens in real time. New daily data flow combines with social media to create a contagion of fear. This leads to demands that Government locks down – even if ministers think it won’t do much long-term good (as was the original UK position).

    It seemed plausible, back in March 2020, that lockdowns might have somehow suffocated Covid – as seemed to happen in China. Now, even China is struggling to make zero Covid work. How long is Beijing prepared to remain cut off from the rest of the world? How long can it keep plunging its megacities into lockdown after just a few cases?

    Johnson writhes in his own particular type of Covid agony. Other leaders broke the rules: in Sweden, lockdown advocates were caught going to nightclubs (the 34-year-old Ebba Busch) or indulging in the Christmas sales (Löfven). But there has been nothing on the scale of the No. 10 nightclub: with eight separate parties in the Prime Minister’s home under investigation. When Buckingham Palace was bombed in 1940, the Queen Mother famously said that now she could “look the East End in the face.” The Prime Minister now has precisely the opposite problem. On May 20, when he attended his drinks party in No. 10, a Bletchley Park codebreaker was buried – with hardly anyone at the funeral, as per Johnson’s orders. Could he look that family in the face?

    The madness continues. The decision to order children to wear face masks in school, I understand, was made when an incorrect figure was flying about inside Government, claiming they cut transmission by a third. An official study this month found a difference in Covid absences of just 0.6 percentage points between schools where pupils wore masks and those where they did not. Only last week, Sage modellers admitted that they got omicron models badly wrong. How many other restrictions were ordered on similar mistakes?

    This will be remembered long after Covid. It is now (rightly) harder to use intelligence to justify military action; in future, it will be harder to use modelling to justify restrictions on people’s lives. Just as Iraq eclipsed everything else Tony Blair did over his 10 years, the lockdowns – and the Prime Minister’s behaviour during them – may eclipse everything else he did, even the Brexit deal. “It might be a Churchill moment,” says one backbench Tory. “We’d thank him for his effort in Brexit and the pandemic, but it’s time to turn the page and the nation wants a new leader.”

    There are lots of reasons that leaders fall, especially after a protected crisis. The crash of 2008 claimed many political scalps, as did Iraq. A failed consensus has many political victims, because those who presided over the mistake enter denial. They cannot recognise what they did was wrong – so, unable to adapt, they need to be removed. The political future may well belong to those who can restore the liberties that lockdown measures tore away. And the new leaders will be those who can talk plainly about the collateral damage, something that those who ordered lockdown struggle to acknowledge.

    In the first lockdown, allies of the Prime Minister said he wanted to be both Churchill and Attlee – to win the Covid war and then oversee the rebuilding effort. He will soon announce the end of Plan B restrictions and say it’s time to move on. But he may find that there are too many of his past mistakes – Partygate and much more – to allow for that.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/18/curse-covid-can-leader-survive-pandemic/

    • AUSTRALIA – Skyworks Going Ahead But Not For Unvaccinated

      Anyone unvaccinated won’t be allowed to attend Perth’s famous Skyworks next week.

    • CBC – One million courses of therapeutic drug ‘slated for delivery’ to Canada this year: Pfizer

      Pfizer Canada’s Kevin Mohamed joined Power & Politics Monday to discuss the Canadian delivery schedule for its COVID-19 therapeutic drug Paxlovid, which received Health Canada approval today.

    • WSJ – Should We Get a Second Booster Vaccine? What the Science Says

      To fight Omicron surges, some countries are handing out second booster shots.

      In Israel, early data suggest a fourth vaccine dose can increase protection against Covid-19, but scientists aren’t sure how long it can last and some say additional boosters won’t help.

    • MSNBC – Dr. Kizzy Corbett On Omicron: ‘A Boosted, Vaccinated Person’ Will Fight This Virus Away

      + comments on the YT page

    • bloomberg – Israel Trial Suggests 4th Vaccine Dose Didn’t Block Omicron

      A fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was insufficient to prevent infection with the omicron variant of Covid-19, according to preliminary data from a trial in Israel released Monday.

    • Israeli vaccine chief: “We have made mistakes”

      In a wide-ranging and forthright interview with Freddie Sayers, Professor Cyrille Cohen, head of Immunology at Bar Ilan University and a member of the advisory committee for vaccines for the Israeli Government said:

      – The Green Pass / vaccine passport concept was no longer relevant in the Omicron era and should be phased out (he expected it to be in short order in Israel)

      – He and his colleagues were surprised and disappointed that the vaccines did not prevent transmission, as they had originally hoped

      – The biggest mistake of the pandemic in Israel was closing schools and education – he apologised for that

      – Widespread infection is now an inevitable part of future immunity — otherwise known as herd immunity

      – Omicron has accelerated the pandemic into the endemic phase, in which Covid will be “like flu”

    • Israel sticks with fourth vaccine shot

      Israel will continue to offer a fourth COVID-19 vaccine shot despite preliminary findings that it is not enough to prevent Omicron infections, a senior health official said on Tuesday, predicting contagions stoked by the variant will wane in a week.

    • HAARETZ – Israel’s Lieberman Wants to ‘Abolish’ Vaccine Certificates; Shorter COVID Isolation Goes Into Effect

      Finance Minister Lieberman says ‘there’s no logic’ to Israel’s Green Pass scheme for people vaccinated against COVID, ‘and many experts agree’

      Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday that he wants to “abolish” the Green Pass, Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination or recovery certificate, which is currently needed to enter many public venues.

      This comes as more lenient rules on isolation for confirmed carriers are set to go into effect on Wednesday, amid calls to relax more COVID-related regulations as the highly infectious, but less violent omicron variant spreads in the country.

      […}According to Minister Lieberman, “there’s no medical or epidemiological logic to the Green Pass, and many experts agree with this.” He said in a tweet: “What it does do is directly harm the economy’s daily functioning, and it also makes a sizable contribution to panic among the public. I’m working with all the relevant parties to abolish the Green Pass so as to protect our normal daily routine.”

      […]On Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz agreed to shorten the isolation period for coronavirus patients from seven to five days.

      On Tuesday, in response to that decision, 180 mayors demanded that they exempt students and teachers from quarantine entirely as long as they can show a negative coronavirus test. In a letter sent to Bennett and Horowitz, they wrote that quarantine is causing “indubitable harm” to students by subjecting them to social distancing and loneliness.

      Some 400 psychologists sent the two ministers a similar letter on Tuesday. “There’s no benefit to quarantining healthy children,” they wrote. “Please, change the instructions for our children and give priority to their psychological wellbeing. We believe the benefits of doing so would outweigh the risks at this stage of the pandemic.”

      Quarantine, the letter continued, deals “an ongoing blow to personal and public resilience. Quarantine means separation from your sources of support, separation from your social peer group and social disconnection, as well as lowered expectations for our children’s functioning … This separation leads to ruinous results, some of which are clearly evident from the outside, like violence in high schools and screen addictions. Others are etched in tender psyches and become part of children’s worldview and the way they experience themselves and their role in the world.”

      […]
      https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-minister-wants-to-abolish-vaccine-certificates-shorter-isolation-starts-1.10547726

    • China recommends gloves, masks when opening international mail amid probe into Beijing’s first omicron case

      Authorities in China are advising citizens to wear gloves and masks when handling international mail as the first case of omicron in Beijing is suspected to be linked to a package delivered from Canada.

      “Minimize purchases of overseas goods or receiving mail from abroad,” state broadcaster CCTV said in a Monday social media post, according to Reuters.

      “Be sure to protect yourself during face-to-face handovers and wear masks and gloves; try to open the package outdoors,” CCTV added.

      Chinese officials have also reportedly pledged to increase efforts to disinfect mail that comes into the country and have called for all postal staff handling the mail to be fully vaccinated.

      Some health officials said that the individual who was infected with the omicron variant in Beijing opened a package that had come from Canada and was routed through the U.S. and Hong Kong, noting that the possible transmission from the package “could not be ruled out,” according to Reuters.

      Ben Cowling, the University of Hong Kong’s chair professor of epidemiology, said earlier this week, however, that the risk associated with contaminated surfaces is typically very low.

      “Virus can remain viable on surfaces for a while at cold temperatures, but transmission via contaminated surfaces is not a common route of transmission,” Cowling said.

      Despite the low risk, China’s State Post Bureau on Monday issued a notice requiring all international mail to be disinfected after reaching the country. The China Post also has reminded recipients of mail from overseas to disinfect it “in a timely manner.”

      The new developments come just three weeks ahead of the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which are scheduled to begin on February 4.

      Officials in several cities across China have begun work recently to halt new outbreaks of coronavirus infections.

      https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/590120-china-recommends-gloves-masks-when-opening

    • DAILY MAIL – ‘The modelling has manipulated fear… it is pretty despicable’: Furious Tory MPs say No10’s use of SAGE projections is a ‘national scandal’ as they accuse

      ‘Professor Lockdown’ of seeking publicity for ‘hysterical forecasts’

      Conservative Bob Seely called for a debate on scientific modelling during Covid

      Steve Baker accused modellers of bouncing No10 into lockdown restrictions

      MPs were told to calm down after the debate erupted into a shouting match

      ———————————–

      Furious MPs today slammed ‘Professor Lockdown’ Neil Ferguson for ‘hysterical forecasts’ that have created a ‘national scandal’.

      In a heated Westminster Hall discussion about Covid, Conservative Bob Seely called for a debate on scientific modelling during the pandemic, in which he accused forecasters of wildly inaccurate predictions.

      Echoing Winston Churchill, Mr Seely said of the modelling: ‘Never before has so much harm been done to so many by so few.’

      He slammed SAGE epidemiologist Professor Ferguson for producing ‘doomsday scenarios’ that were proven wrong time and time again.

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10415373/Furious-MPs-told-calm-row-Government-modelling-Covid-pandemic.html

      =============================

    • @Mmartin
      TY for the beautiful article!
      Such balance is rare.
      I don't read Telegraph because of its paywall, so this is a real treat.

  11. city news – McGill social work students to strike against in-person classes

    McGill’s School of Social Work voted to boycott in-person classes on Monday night.

    An overwhelming majority of students called for the strike after the university reversed the School’s decision to go online as COVID-19 infections skyrocket in Quebec.