This is the alt-news thread

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

What does that have to do with price gouging during the Covid crisis?

What I’m saying has everything to do with the COVID-19 crisis and any other crisis where goods and services are needed.

If stores didn’t face the risk of being criminally charged with “price gouging,” toilet paper, rubber gloves, masks, Personal Protective Equipment, and sanitizers would have remained on the shelf due to higher prices until manufacturers responded with greater production and competition to bring prices down and supplies up again.

Also, if manufacturers weren’t inhibited by alcohol restrictions and import restrictions, the market would have been awash with sanitizer and filled with cheap COVID-19 testing kits.

And one thing neither the Fauci/WHO crowd nor the Quinine-and-horse-paste crowd focused upon was how to keep people out of the health demographic that put people at greater risk for COVID-19 in the first place.

This should have been a boom time for exercise equipment, fitness centers, diets, and medicines to get people losing weight and fighting cardio-respiratory disease. But Doctors risked being accused of Misinformation/Disinformation/Malinformation and “Fat-Shaming” if they proposed these as solutions, plus stores and fitness centers were shut down during the pandemic. If there was freedom for more preventative health care–along with minor precautions to keep those most at-risk separate from the rest of us–the economy could have proceeded pretty much as normal until the vaccine came.

In other words, if you want solutions to a naturally-created crisis, get Government out of the way of individuals acting towards solving the problem.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum and punctuation
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

Rose Wilder Lane’s history in The Discovery of Freedom wasn’t accurate, especially on the role of religion in the struggle for freedom, but there was one quote of hers that any Atheist with good sense could agree with that is relevant to our continued discussions of work:

“Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been too much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting diseases and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.”

― Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery Of Freedom: Man’s Struggle Against Authority.

There was a lot of blood-pissing thought and work that went into allowing the Laura Ingalls of the world to even be born to be there to gambol down the prairie hill with her Sisters and doggie Bandit in every episode. Those who take it for granted should at least not get in the way.

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

Naomi Oreskes also got it wrong about attributing U.S. success to Manifest Destiny. If the U.S. remained only the original 13 Independent States, as long as it embraced political and economic freedom, it still would have been the greatest, most prosperous nation on Earth by being a hub of greater production and trade and people immigrating here to be a part of it all, the same as is the case with Taiwan and the former Hong Kong versus Mainland Red China.

[Unseen]

@Enco

The men (and women) who are “fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting diseases and insects and weather and space and time” have a purpose which is to make living possible first and then, eventually, an expectation. In other words, a right.

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

The men (and women) who are “fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting diseases and insects and weather and space and time” have a purpose which is to make living possible first and then, eventually, an expectation. In other words, a right.

A right is a freedom to act that only imposes negative obligations not positive obligations upon other humans, namely the negative obligation to not violate the same rights og others.

A right is not a guarantee to a result or an expectation or entitlement to an object, since such would impose a positive obligation upon others and would effectively require slave labor.

An individual has a right to think, to work towards chosen goals, and to keep, use, enjoy, save, or invest the fruits of that labor. Though these rights can include the right to engage in voluntary charity, an individual has no right to the fruits provided by the labor of others.

[Unseen]

Discussion with Matt Kennard, author of Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy

Do governments govern the major corporations or vice versa? Are aid programs just a way to acquire natural resources, especially petroleum? How long can a government last if it wants to take over a corporation-owned operation to benefit its people? (Answer, just ask Venezuelans, Guatemalans, and Libyans, among many others.)

[Unseen]

Good question: Who’s she really working for?

[Unseen]

Tucker Carlson is a problem for me. I hate much of his rightist pap (and you’ll find probably more than one thing to hate here) but about half the time he makes perfect sense. He’s making a lot of logical sense here: Anyone who believes Russia took out the dam and Nord Stream 2 is logically challenged.

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

The blown-up dam in Ukraine, while a horrible wasting of resources, could very well be a tactic used in the past by The Netherlands against the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazis.

Super Soakers: When the Dutch Used Floods as Weapons
By Matt Soniak | Jul 14, 2015
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65589/super-soakers-when-dutch-used-floods-weapons

Flood waters carry with them toxic chemicals from the Earth, biohazards from animal cadavers and their waste, floating fuel tanks that can explode on the live electric wires in the water, object underneath that can puncture boats and injure or kill troops, slip hazards from as little as 6 inches of fast-flowing streams, rusting and jamming of weapons, and other hazards. (A actual global “Great Flood” of Biblical and previous legends would have been an extinction event for almost all of life on Earth.)

The destruction of the dam could very well be a way of the Ukrainians telling Putin: “If we can’t have our nation, then you won’t either.”

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

A actual global “Great Flood” of Biblical and previous legends would have been an extinction event for almost all of life on Earth.)

By this I mean an extinction event lasting up until now, perhaps forever, including for those on the Ark. (Again, you can’t start or re-start a species on just one male and one female or even four of each due to the lack of genetic diversity of the two gametes and subsequent generations.)

[Unseen]

@Enco

While there was no Biblical Great Flood, during the ice age there were many large scale floods and the largest had a huge impact on the West, though no extinctions are attributed to it (that we know of). According to ChatGPT:

The Ice Age floods, also known as the Missoula Floods, were a series of cataclysmic floods that occurred during the last ice age in North America, specifically in what is now the northwestern United States. These floods were caused by the periodic failure of ice dams that impounded huge glacial lakes, releasing massive amounts of water across the landscape.

While the Ice Age floods had a significant impact on the landscape, they did not cause any major extinctions. The floods primarily affected the physical geography of the region, reshaping the landforms and carving out the distinctive Channeled Scablands in Washington State. They also deposited sediments and eroded the existing terrain. However, the floods did not significantly affect the flora and fauna of the region to the extent of causing widespread extinctions.

It’s worth noting that the Ice Age, as a whole, did cause various extinctions across the globe due to the significant climate changes and associated shifts in ecosystems. However, the Ice Age floods themselves were not a direct cause of extinctions.

[Unseen]

From a minor American news network:

From an Indian English language network:

China kind of calls it a lie on a reliable Asian news agency:

U.S. admits it’s true according to NBC, blames Trump:

[Unseen]

[Unseen]

PRIGOZHIN’S FOLLY article by Seymour Hersh

According to Hersh, contrary to the mainstream/White House narrative, the failed coup actually strengthens Putin’s hand.

The Biden administration had a glorious few days last weekend. The ongoing disaster in Ukraine slipped from the headlines to be replaced by the “revolt,” as a New York Times headline put it, of Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the mercenary Wagner Group.

The focus slipped from Ukraine’s failing counter-offensive to Prigozhin’s threat to Putin’s control. As one headline in the Times put it, “Revolt Raises Searing Question: Could Putin Lose Power?” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius posed this assessment: “Putin looked into the abyss Saturday—and blinked.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken—the administration’s go-to wartime flack, who weeks ago spoke proudly of his commitment not to seek a ceasefire in Ukraine—appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation with his own version of reality: “Sixteen months ago, Russian forces were . . . thinking they would erase Ukraine from the map as an independent country,” Blinken said. “Now, over the weekend they’ve had to defend Moscow, Russia’s capital, against mercenaries of Putin’s own making. . . . It was a direct challenge to Putin’s authority. . . . It shows real cracks.”

Blinken, unchallenged by his interviewer, Margaret Brennan, as he knew he would not be—why else would he appear on the show?—went on to suggest that the defection of the crazed Wagner leader would be a boon for Ukraine’s forces, whose slaughter by Russian troops was ongoing as he spoke. “To the extent that it presents a real distraction for Putin, and for Russian authorities, that they have to look at—sort of mind their rear as they’re trying to deal with the counter offensive in Ukraine, I think that creates even greater openings for the Ukrainians to do well on the ground.” 

At this point was Blinken speaking for Joe Biden? Are we to understand that this is what the man in charge believes?

We now know that the chronically unstable Prigozhin’s revolt fizzled out within a day, as he fled to Belarus, with a no-prosecution guarantee, and his mercenary army was mingled into the Russian army. There was no march on Moscow, nor was there a significant threat to Putin’s rule.

Pity the Washington columnists and national security correspondents who seem to rely heavily on official backgrounders with White House and State Department officials. Given the published results of such briefings, those officials seem unable to look at the reality of the past few weeks, or the total disaster that has befallen the Ukraine military’s counter-offensive.

So, below is a look at what is really going that was provided to me by a knowledgeable source in the American intelligence community:

Read the rest here:

 

[Unseen]

Tucker is not easy to define. Here he goes after the current GOP narratives:

[Author]

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