Reader’s Links for march 19, 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

25 Replies to “Reader’s Links for march 19, 2022”

  1. Trudeau’s Defence Minister announced to Canadians that Canada has “exhausted inventory from the Canadian Armed Forces,” and “there are capacity issues,” after sending all of our equipment to Ukraine’s President. DISASTER: (h/t Keean Bexte)

    https://t.co/L7aykvoTWb

  2. The EXTREMELY under reported numbers from the CDC as of March 11, 2022

    Vaccine adverse reactions 1,183,495

    Deaths25,641

    Serious injuries 208,209

    Little Kids 5-11 9,161 reactions

    12-17 30,295

    Skewed, fudged, flat out lied, the new normal.

    No arrests, no incarceration, no hanging for their crimes.

    • twitter @PoliticalShort

      Here are the names of the 50 intel officials who signed a letter saying Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.”

      As @RichardGrenell has pointed out, none of these officials had a single piece of raw intel indicating it was disinformation.

      They made it up to help Biden.

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FONQ3jhWQAQIpfV?format=png&name=large

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FONRC5VXwAAFZU9?format=png&name=large

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FONRAWKX0AY2SeM?format=png&name=large

      https://twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/1505136046471798785

    • Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails

      October 19, 2020

      We are all individuals who devoted significant por<ons of our lives to na<onal security. Some of us served in senior posi<ons in policy departments and agencies, and some of us served in senior posi<ons in the Intelligence Community. Some of us were poli<cal appointees, and some were career officials. Many of us worked for presidents of both political parties.

      We are all also individuals who see Russia as one of our na<on’s primary adversaries. All of us have an understanding of the wide range of Russian overt and covert activities that undermine US national security, with some of us knowing Russian behavior intimately, as we worked to defend our nation against it for a career. A few of us worked against Russian information operations in the United States in the last several years.

      Perhaps most important, each of us believes deeply that American citizens should determine the outcome of elec8ons, not foreign governments. All of us agree with the founding fathers’ concern about the damage that foreign interference in our poli8cs can do to our democracy.

      It is for all these reasons that we write to say that the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.

      We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.

      If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this elec8on, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.

      There are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement.

      Such an operation would be consistent with Russian objectives, as outlined publicly and recently by the Intelligence Community, to create political chaos in the United States and to deepen political divisions here but also to undermine the candidacy of former Vice President Biden and thereby help the candidacy of President Trump. For the Russians at this point, with Trump down in the polls, there is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win. A “laptop op” fits the bill, as the publication of the emails are clearly designed to discredit Biden.

      Such an operation would be consistent with some of the key methods Russia has used in its now multi-year operation to interfere in our democracy – the hacking (via cyber operations) and the dumping of accurate information or the distribution of inaccurate or misinformation. Russia did both of these during the 2016 presidential election – judgments shared by the US Intelligence Community, the investigation into Russian activities by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and the entirety (all Republicans and Democrats) on the current Senate Intelligence Committee.

      Such an operation is also consistent with several data points. The Russians, according to media reports and cybersecurity experts, targeted Burisma late last year for cyber collection and gained access to its emails. And Ukrainian politician and businessman Adriy Derkach, identified and sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for being a 10-year Russian agent interfering in the 2020 election, passed purported materials on Burisma and Hunter Biden to Giuliani.

      Our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue is consistent with two other significant data points as well. According to the Washington Post, citing four sources, “U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.”

      In addition, media reports say that the FBI has now opened an investigation into Russian
      involvement in this case. According to USA Today, “…federal authorities are investigating whether the material supplied to the New York Post by Rudy Giuliani…is part of a smoke bomb of disinformation pushed by Russia.”

      We do not know whether these press reports are accurate, but they do suggest concern within Executiuve Branch departments and agencies that mirrors ours. It is high time that Russia stops interfering in our democracy

      more :
      https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000

      =============================
      the conservative tree house – If U.S. Intelligence Will Lie So Easily About Anything, Why Would We Believe Them About Ukraine

      Why would we believe anything from them about Ukraine?

      https://theconservativetreehouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/New-York-Post-1-915×1024.jpg

      https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/03/19/if-u-s-intelligence-will-lie-so-easily-about-anything-why-would-we-believe-them-about-ukraine

  3. CBC – The debate to keep virtual health care post-pandemic

    … some patients want to see the convenience of virtual care continue, others are concerned

  4. Rebel news – Theresa Tam: it’s up to employers to medically segregate staff

    Theresa Tam, says it’s up to employers to medically segregate staff, all public health can do is provide advice.

    Tam admits the vaccine science has changed, and provided no concrete answer on why mandates exist.

  5. French senators slam consultancy use ‘explosion’ under Macron

    Consultancy firms have been paid billions to advise on policies from coronavirus vaccinations to France’s EU presidency.

    PARIS — Emmanuel Macron’s government and other public bodies have signed contracts worth at least €2.4 billion with consultancy firms since 2018, for work on issues ranging from the coronavirus vaccine rollout to digital transformation, according to a new report from the French Senate.

    Lawmakers from France’s top chamber are presenting their findings Thursday after a four-month parliamentary inquiry that looked into lucrative contracts with McKinsey, Accenture, BCG and the like.

    Ministries’ consulting expenses have more than doubled since the beginning of Macron’s tenure as French president, with a sharp acceleration in 2021 (up 45 percent on the previous year) due to the pandemic, according to the report from the inquiry committee — made up of a group of senators and led by the opposition.

    The senators also accused McKinsey of lying about its tax situation during parliamentary hearings and said they filed a complaint to the prosecutor’s office. Despite landing lucrative deals with the French government over the years, McKinsey “has not paid corporate tax in France for at least 10 years,” said Senator Éliane Assassi during a press conference. “One of [McKinsey’s] directors said under oath … that McKinsey paid taxes in France, so we checked by [requesting data] from the Finance ministry. The finding is clear.”

    The committee’s findings, based on data obtained from the government’s budget department, showed “an explosion” of consulting services’ uptake by the public sector. Consultancy use has become “a reflex” and consulting firms have been “involved in most of the major reforms” in France such as the pension reform scheme, the housing benefits reform and several aspects of the recovery plan, the 350-page report reads.

    Leading consultancies have also been tapped to provide European benchmarks ahead of the French presidency of the Council of the EU on issues such as e-health and new industrial projects.

    The Senate’s conclusions come the same day as the French president presents his platform for re-election, a month ahead of April’s presidential election.

    A year after POLITICO’s reporting on the use of consultancies during the pandemic in France sparked a nationwide debate, the opposition is still using the issue to attack Macron’s tenure, arguing the level of spending on consultancies illustrates how badly the French public sector has been hollowed out.

    Minister of Public Action Amélie de Montchalin, who is supervising policies on the use of consultancies, did not reply to a request for comment.

    A ‘ton of dough’

    The Senate’s investigative committee, which denounced an “opacity” and a lack of accountability in the use of consulting firms, presented a detailed analysis of consultancy spending that it says represents “a ton of dough” — a direct allusion to a 2018 video of Macron criticizing social care as “costing a ton of dough,” which became a focal point of the Yellow Jacket protests.

    While de Montchalin told the inquiry earlier this year that consultancies’ expenses were stable, the Senate committee concluded the opposite.

    According to data obtained from the budget ministry, consultancy spending by French ministries amounted to €893.9 million in 2021, compared to €379.1 million in 2018. The total includes both strategy and management consulting and more specialized consultancies such as HR and IT services.

    While it is difficult to compare Macron’s consulting expenses to those of his predecessors because of the lack of reporting for previous periods, data disclosed by the European Federation of Management Consultancies Associations and mentioned in the report suggest a more restrained use of consultancies under Macron’s predecessor François Hollande but similar levels under Nicolas Sarkozy.

    McKinsey under fire

    Consulting activities in France came under the spotlight during the country’s slow coronavirus vaccine rollout in January 2021. At the time, France lagged behind Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain in its distribution of the jabs — a problem in a country that prides itself on the excellence of its public services, especially in health.

    As McKinsey and others came to the rescue, politicians from the opposition said the administration could no longer fulfil its mission. They especially criticized the use of a company that had paid a $573 million settlement in the U.S. over claims about its role in the opioid crisis, and had faced corruption scandals.

    The government said consultancy use made sense in a crisis situation.

    The information on McKinsey’s involvement in the coronavirus vaccine rollout, first reported by POLITICO, led French parliamentarians from both the opposition and the governing party to take a broader interest in consultancy use by the public sector.

    The Senate’s investigative committee has gone furthest in its work, taking advantage of its judicial powers to seize nearly 7,000 documents from ministries and also directly from consulting firms.

    The senators’ report includes confidential slides from McKinsey and emails with senior government officials. In the documents, the consultancy — which is the most targeted in the report even though it represents only 1 percent of government spending in the sector — promises key officials that it will stay “behind the scenes.”

    It shows McKinsey organized an event for the Elysée pro bono, which it leveraged in a commercial pitch to another public administration — offering the latter an opportunity to participate in the Elysée public event.

    The report also gives insight into France’s EU priorities through several benchmark studies commissioned from consultancy firms.

    The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) was paid €196,200 to analyze “The e-health maturity of European Union countries, as part of the French EU presidency.” The consulting firm Roland Berger sent work costing €149,201 on “The costs of waste collection at the European level.” McKinsey, for its part, worked on a study on “the time required to process industrial projects in Europe, in particular in Germany, Poland and Sweden” for €403,548.

    The government also paid at least €1.6 million in consulting fees to McKinsey and Roland Berger for work on its flagship pension reform, which has been postponed indefinitely due to the pandemic.

    France is by no means the only country to have turned to the private sector to help run the state’s affairs and many European countries heavily rely on consultancies for outsourcing public functions, according to data from the European Federation of Management Consultancies Associations.

    While recognizing that consultants can be useful or indispensable because of a lack of skills or resources within public administrations, the French Senate also pushed the idea that the consulting sector is adopting a strategy of predatory influence toward the government, raising questions over potential conflicts of interests as well as simple cost efficiency.

    In Germany, the use of consultancies by the government caused a full-blown scandal that forced Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to admit “mistakes” when she was the country’s defense minister. The U.K. also pledged to reduce spending on external consultants.

    The French government already announced it was putting itself on a consultancy diet in January. Lawmakers, which say the move comes too late, are suggesting implementing tougher measures and are drafting a new bill to do so.

    https://www.politico.eu/article/french-senators-slam-consultancy-use-explosion-under-macron/

    • BCG – the Boston Consulting Group – was founded by Romney and a few others. It had unassuming headquarters in Cambridge, wedged between Harvard and MIT. Tapped academics in applied sciences and engineering for international corporate and govt clients.

      I don’t know about now, but it used to be a good first job out of school/grad school. Bibi worked there. So did I.

    • The “politicians”were elected to manage the peoples affairs,they should not be allowed to shift their responsibility by paying someone else to do their job.

  6. *****FILMED IN 2015: DOCUMENTARY BY FRENCH JOURNALIST ANNE-LAURE BONNEL: DONBASS: 8 YEARS OF WAR – 53:49
    “Sorry to shock the audience, but the truth is that Ukrainian troops bombed their own people.”
    Bonaire recorded the devastated Donbass after the war with plain footage, roads full of bomb craters, civilian casualties after the bombing, mothers who lost their children, old people and children who hid in cellars for 7 months, young people the grave…
    https://rumble.com/vxujmh-donbass-english-subtitles-documentary-by-french-journalist-anne-laure-bonne.html

    • I don’t think anybody except the people who were there really knows. We’re hearing from friends and family in different parts of the country who don’t know what’s going on a mile away. Rumors and fear.

      I heard that the militias rounded up the civilians and forced them into the underground bomb shelter. Then they started firing missiles and whatnot from the upper floors of the building.

      That’s a Hamas tactic.

      I’m pretty sure that’s what happened in Mariupol, AZOB headquarters in a majority Russian zone. When the “humanitarian ceasefire” was announced, those who tried to leave were shot. And NOT by Russian soldiers.

  7. REGIS TREMBLAY: UKRAINE: THE PRICE YOU PAY FOR SPEAKING OUT – 40:32
    Jareth Copus in an amazing interview about his personal journey, the “rat line” he created in Kiev, Ukraine, Donetsk, Georgia, Moldova and elsewhere. He’s an author of ‘Preparing for the Worst and Ukraine Forever a Pawn’.

    • “The “Essence of Time” movement is based on just four principles.”

      “Principle # 1. Each of us perceives the collapse of the USSR as a personal tragedy. Those behind the collapse deprived us of our Motherland. This is especially clear today, that the same forces are trying to deal the final blow to Russia, using the same techniques that allowed them to orchestrate the collapse of the USSR.”

      “Principle # 2. We seek to know why the Soviet Union collapsed and who is to blame for the tragedy. We understand that this is a matter of great complexity, that the enemy used sophisticated and vicious weaponry against us, and that it still creates decoys and smokescreens. We avoid simple answers. For we understand that, as the Russian saying goes, “simplicity is worse than theft”, which is to say that any simplification here would be a gross misdeed.”

      “Principle #3. We seek to know not only who was responsible for the decay of the USSR and what the true intentions of those who paved the way for its collapse were. We also want to understand how to restore what was lost. We struggle through to the truth for the sake of this understanding. It takes ten times more effort to restore what was lost than to find the answer to by whom, how and why what we loved was taken away.”

      “Principle #4. Without love, reason is weak. Without reason, love is blind.”
      http://eu.eot.su/about/manifesto/?msclkid=0d4962b9a7e011ecb647921eea33943f

      ” Essence of Time is a neo-Stalinist political movement in Russia which was founded in March 2011 by Sergey Kurginyan. The movement combined communism and Russian nationalism, and it sought to restore the Soviet Union in a “new and improved” form. The movement also claimed that capitalism went against Russian historical and cultural heritage, sought to unite communists, socialists, patriots, and Orthodox Christians through a spiritual synthesis, and the movement contributed fighters to the pro-Russian separatists during the Donbass War, many of whom (among them Russell Bentley) were international volunteers who fought for the Vostok Battalion.”
      https://historica.fandom.com/wiki/Essence_of_Time?msclkid=c638a4c8a7e011ec8943867eb784c0d0

      • Ugh.
        Spanish Civil War Redux. As much of a magnet as ISIS. Jihadi tourism. Flavors of righteousness, packaged for cannon fodder delectation.

        Hitler and Mussolini did PR for the monarchist establishment behind General Franco’s coup. The Republic is satanic! 100% godless Communist! Nun-rapists!

        Stalin, et al. did PR for the other side: Workers unite to fight for freedom! Democracy!
        (Thus the “Abraham Lincoln Brigade” from the U.S.)

        Their optional war devastated Spain, rent an entire society. A million dead in Madrid alone. Decades of dictatorship, complete with secret police, draconian censorship, impoverished masses.

  8. Injunction granted to address downtown Calgary protests

    The City is trying to put an end to the so-called freedom protests taking over downtown Calgary every Saturday.

  9. Man arrested at Ontario mosque after attacking worshippers

    Police were called to the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre in Mississauga, Ont., west of Toronto, on Saturday morning after a man attacked the congregation gathered for prayer with bear spray while ‘brandishing a hatchet.’

    Worshippers restrained the attacker, who was later taken into custody.

  10. Quebecer creates mask clip for the immunocompromised

    …the mask attachment for people to recognize immunosuppressed people and keep a safe distance.