Remember the Liberty !

I just stumbled upon this article written a few weeks ago in commemoration of Israel's attack on the US liberty, which distills that and various other acts of perfidy.

Israel had intended to kill everyone on board, blame the attack on Egypt, and trigger direct US involvement in the war.  But most of the crew managed to survive, and they hooked up an antenna to broadcast who was attacking them.

The attack was largely unmentioned in US media, and when the commanding officer was given a medal of honor, also not covered by US media, President Johnson not only did not officiate or even attend the ceremony, he called Israel to be sure it was OK.

Article also mentions there was the 1968 diversion of over 300 kgs of enriched uranium from NUMEC.  (Not in this article but elsewhere I read that some informant went to Johnson directly with the story of the diversion, and Johnson just laughed.)

Also the honoring of terrorists in the Lavon Affair, in which civil institutions in Egypt were blown up in the 1950's with the intention of blaming the bombings on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Also the honoring of Jonathan Pollard in Israel.  Pollard was one of the most damaging spies in US history.  

And the 1980's smuggling of nuclear triggers, aided by a Hollywood billionaire.  

And the murder of Rachel Corrie, who was defending the house of a medical doctor in Rafah.  Rachel was repeatedly run over by an IDF Caterpillar.  An Israeli court exonerated the military and blamed Rachel herself.

And going back to the bombing of the King David Hotel, which killed 91.  The King David Hotel was used as an administrative center by the British.  The Irgun terrorists disguised themselves as Arabs.  The chief Irgun terrorist responsible for this, Menachem Begin, went on to become Prime Minister of Israel and even won a Nobel Peace Prize.

Israel has Neutron Bombs

Poster duckncover wrote this comment at Moon of Alabama:

Why does no one talk about Israel's nuetron bombs? The whistleblower mordecai reported nuetron bombs were in mass production in Dimona after 1984. Nuetron bombs contaminate the environment much much less than thermonuclear. They can be used quite close to friendly troops without killing them. The blast from detonation is comparable or less than conventional bombs making detonating them amongst conventional bombs for covert use a very real possibility. They are simpler to construct than thermonuclear weapons. They kill by the wave of nuetron radiation that is enhanced.

Dimona creates enough material for 100 nuclear weapons a year since 1973. Yet all sources list their nuclear weapons as ",around 300" . The reality is no one knows. Mordecai reported a growing focus on neutron bombs. It makes sense because of Israel's close proximity to its enemies.

You can read about Israel's nuetron bombs on Wikipedia. Yet what do we read about? Hezbollah's rocket arsenal. Yes this is quite the arsenal. Yes Hezbollah is quite the force. And yes obviously Israel plans to use nuetron weapons in south Lebanon in large quantities and their use will be devastating. It's as obvious as a dead cow in the middle of the road but no one discusses it. You think IDF is going to go to to toe with Hezbollah? Get real.

The scientist Christopher Busby has documented u235 and u238 in both Lebanon and Gaza. These would be the expected byproducts of a nuetron bomb. Neutron bomb uses no Plutonium. They could also be explained by depleted uranium in projectiles and or bomb casings. Looked at another way any where depleted uranium is deployed in projectiles or bomb casings there is plausible deniability for nuetron weapons. Everyone above ground will die in the target area but since there is no fallout troops can immediately enter the area to clean up the bodies. Nuetron weapons can be delivered with short range weapons. Mordecai reported the majority were 155 shells back then.

It is my belief that the Israel's nuetron weapons were created specifically for use on Israel's borders. It is my belief that after the 2006 I'll fated excursions into south Lebanon planning for nuetron weapon use became the primary battle plan to cope with Hezbollah. The strong potential exists to use these weapons semi covertly deploying them amongst conventional bombs. The worlds militaries will not be fooled and there will be no intent to do so the crossing of the nuclear threshold will be deliberate to comunicate appetite for destruction not just in Israel but everywhere in the list of growing potential conflicts. This is the apocalypse in the here and now that humanity faces beginning in south Lebanon. Israel has even cleared the area of its civillians for nuetron weapon deployment and no one discussed it or seems to have the slightest clue that the nuclear threshold is about to be crossed.it appears that is believed that Israel would only respond to nuclear weapon use by others not use them first. This flies in the face of reality the israel neutron weapons program was specifically created for first use to cope with superior numerical or technical threats on their borders while maintaining low casualties in the IDF. We witness the exact scenario the neutron bombs were created for with Hezbollah and the area has been cleared for their use yet not one of the many many articles about the impending conflict mentions the neutron weapons. Every single analysis is that the IDF will lose and lose badly to Hezbollah tajing heavy casualties and losing territory and that was prior to losses in Gaza. Does anybody think the IDF intends to either give up northern Israel or take heavy losses at the hands of Hezbollah? No? Then Israel will obviously withdraw from Gaza yes? No? Then the primary plan to cope with and eliminate Hezbollah as a threat semi covert nuetron weapon use will be implemented. Who will say anything? Not Russia. Not Turkey. Not Iran. If Iran wants in the thermonuclear not nuetron weapons will be deployed out of the dolphin class submarines. The amazing fact is Israel has significant capability to deploy nuclear weapons out of submarines while China has none.

IMO the semi covert nuclear weapon deployment in south Lebanon not only reflects that conflict but will represent a desperate attempt by the west to maintain dominance. This is absaloutly in keeping with other semi covert actions that are given ridiculous cover stories but are clearly understood by the worlds intelligence agencies and militaries as demonstrations of willingness to use various WMDs even if they result in civilian casualties. Gaza is direct messaging that civillian casualties are not a deterrent as the west desperately tries to maintain dominance. Does anyone truly believe the October 7 event was unrelated to the events in Ukraine and Taiwan? World war is upon us and these madmen are going to kill us all. Including the innocent. That is the greatest sin taking the life of the innocent.

More debunking Hamas "mass rape" hoax

https://x.com/zei_squirrel/status/1803819790718394428

Academic Paper on Gaza

 Lee Mordechai, a history professor in Israel, has updated his paper on Gaza, and discusses it here on X.

Not any surprises here if you've already been following the story.  But it's all documented and spelled out.

Professor Mordechai also spells out his reasons for calling what is happening a Genocide.

Beyond the death, destruction, and displacement, he also emphasizes the dehumanization of Palestinians in Israel.

Debunking the Debunkers

 X.com has started applying a Community Note whenever a highly viewed photo of shot and burned out cars from the Nova music rave near Gaza which was attacked by Hamas.

This photo has appeared in countless posts and viewed millions of times.

The Community Note provides 8 links to mainstream news and factchecking websites.

I like the Community Note system in general, and I am deeply opposed to shadowbanning, blocking, deleting, and banning.  I am grateful that I can read both sides of the story, and check out the Community Notes for myself.

But it seems there is less in these particular debunkings than the Community Note suggests.

Most of the mainstream debunking is addressed not to the photo of burned out cars, but to a "viral video" showing cars being shot up by Apache helicopters.  That video has long been established not to have come from the attacks on October 7, but later and inside Gaza.  Very little if any debunking is addressed to photos of burned out cars.  (All they say is that there is "no evidence" that IDF caused this, nor have IDF admitted it.)

I remember these posts as they were originally being posted just after October 7.  While Syrian Girl and others may have initially claimed the video was an attack on the Nova festival cars by IDF, they almost immediately walked that back, as it was quickly proven back then that the video did not come from the Nova Festival.  They said that the video showed what shooting cars would be like.  Now imagine this happening at the Nova Festival, they said.  That's how so much destruction could have been created there, by Apache helicopters.

So the main claim that is being debunked is really a strawman which nobody (at least nobody doing the original postings) claims.  The Apache shooting video is not being shown as direct evidence of what happened at Nova, but as the kind of thing which could have happened there too.  IOW, the video shows that an attack by Apache helicopters is a a plausible explanation of what happened at Nova.

What's really more convincing is the picture of burned out cars.  It's hard to imagine lightly armed militants causing so much destruction, or even wanting to when it would not provide them with any more hostages--which was their main objective.  That is really the argument, and none of the debunking addresses it at all.  The evidence therefore comes from a kind of argument: reductio ad absurdum.  The Israeli narrative denies that Hamas had any objective other than creating terror atrocities, alleging that Hamas are just monsters.  That is a continuation of the absurdity.

Now there is a picture of all the burned out cars together in a big heap that appears more than any other nowadays.  Debunkers like to point out that this photo of all the cars was taken 10km away from the Nova festival, where Israel had collected all the cars for destruction.*  But there is another video showing drone footage on October 7 showing these burned and shot out cars before they were moved.  That footage is even shared by the Washington Post.  It is not so easily "explained" (nor does it seem that mainstream sources even bother to try) except by blaming it on Hamas.

(*Although the heap of cars was not at the original location, it still does show a massive amount of destruction which would be hard to imagine Hamas militants being responsible for.  This is even more clear seeing the drone footage of the cars before they were moved.)

In fact what seems to have happened* is that IDF blocked the exit of cars from the festival on the assumption that many would be hostages being taken by Hamas.  And then IDF went back and shot up the cars, to be sure that Hamas wasn't getting any hostages.  Even if Israeli ravers, hostages or not, would be shot in the process. This is the infamous Hannibal Directive, which IDF denies.  Shooting up cars was not an Hamas objective, and they probably didn't have the firepower to destroy so many cars, nor would they have wanted to.

(*I posted on this way back in October, following a long X thread on it.)

If IDF had been innocent of shooting and burning the cars, it would have been far better if Israel had left the cars in their original positions, for international monitors to come and check it out for themselves.  Or if they had established detailed forensics for as many cars as possible, explaining what happened.  In that context, the fact that they almost immediately moved the cars to a different location for destruction is itself very suspicious.  If there is no clear evidence of Israel shooting up the cars it is because Israel itself destroyed the evidence as quickly as it could.

A further argument not addressed at all in the debunkings is that the Nova festival wasn't originally planned to occur in the Gaza adjacent location.  It was planned to occur elsewhere, but very curiously moved to the Gaza adjacent location on October 6, long after Israeli intelligence had become aware of Hamas plans for an imminent attack (about which Israeli leadership decided on the night of October 6 to do nothing, because it would be a dud, they declared).

Not only are those facts not discussed in the debunkings, they were hardly mentioned in mainstream media at all.

Even ignoring how these facts suggest that Israeli leadership wanted a large number of deaths to arise from an attack they knew would happen, in order to justify crushing Gaza completely, the fact is that Hamas could not have included the Nova festival in their planning, which had gone on for years.

The Israeli narrative never describes how the route that Hamas took inside Israel was not directed at the Nova festival, or the nearby Kibbutz, but on several IDF bases ringing Gaza where Hamas planned to take hostages.  The Israeli narrative never mentions that at all because it makes the Hamas plans sound like a military rather than a terror operation.  So all the discussion is focused on atrocities at the Music festival which Hamas had no way of knowing would be in their planned path.

TERF's may sometimes be right

 Here's a typical article from a TERF website which sounds plausibly correct.

Transexuality does not necessarily erase "biological sex" or sex defined at birth, though there could be errors in cases where people have an unusual combination of sex chromosomes.

The inalienable Rights of Transexuals include:

1) Adults over 18 have a right to choose sex changes without the assent of parents or others.

2) Transexuals have a right to non-discrimination on the basis of sex changes, EXCEPT as detailed below.

3) Transexuals have freedom of speech and religion and full protection of the law, just like other people.

OTOH, transexuality does not "erase" sex as determined by chromosomes, which is necessary to report in some legal, medical, and administrative cases.  In these cases, the correct "assignment" is not always the self-chosen one.  All these secondary cases are subject to 'political' adjudication instead of one based on inalienable rights like the above.

1) Participation is gender selective athletics.

2) Use of gender selective bathrooms.

3) Gender selective fraternal organizations.

In the first case, one might be swayed by circumstances at hand.  If a trans-woman is similar enough in relevant physical characteristics to other women, it seems reasonable they may participate as a woman, and otherwise not.

In the second case, having a penis might be the distinguishing fact.  There seems little social risk in letting a trans-woman without a penis use the women's bathroom.

In the third case, it seems reasonable to waive the usual laws and standards against non-discrimination and let these fraternal organizations decide for themselves how to define themselves such as trans-inclusive or non-trans or trans-as-we-feel-fit.

 There is little doubt that western intelligence and its subservient western media and left organizations (most often these are little more than controlled opposition for the imperial state) seized on a more extreme version of trans rights in order to cause social division, especially in socially conservative "enemy" countries (and even right here at home in the west, where division of many kinds is always being fostered to prevent a wage slave revolt).

The IOC officially has guidelines which sound about right.  Because inclusion is important, the presumption is that all individuals may participate according to their declared gender.  However, other participants may report cases of perceived unfairness (though it does not establish a process for handling such things, or say how they should be resolved).

The IOC guidelines specifically prohibit making requirements for any kind of therapy or conversion.  (Previous guidelines did and it caused a backlash.)

(According to HRC, transgender have participated in athletics for decades without notable unfairness.)

It would seem if objective criteria are established, a high bar ought to be set for inclusion.  Thus transgender women having strength characteristics lower than any cis women participants in historical records would be acceptable, or shown statistically to be at or below the 99% percentile of potential athletes.  There should be no discrimination based on trans itself.

Now however it is reported Paris 2024 is requiring male to female surgical conversions be done before age of 12.  Not noted by NBC is that this violates IOC guidelines.  Furthermore, it seems transgender are simply specifically ruled out for some sports, also a violation.

The Defeat of Israel

Ted Rall writes an excellent piece (though I've heard it all before): How Hamas Defeated Israel.

Based on similar arguments, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe declared the beginning of the end for Israel in December.

But it's too early to start celebrating.  Fighting continues, and Gazans and other Palestinians are still being massacred and starved.

And we have two wounded beasts, Israel itself, and its imperial backer the USA which is fighting at least 2 proxy wars and has been instigating and planning a third hot war on China real soon now, with draconian sanctions on much of the world already, and the dollar predictably being slammed in much of the world, including recently Saudi Arabia.  I remember people saying we couldn't have national heathcare because China would dump US bonds.  Well, China is dumping US bonds now.

The most pro-Palestine member of the European Parliament, Clare Daly, just lost her seat in the recent elections.  Zionists have a firm hold on US, UK, Germany, and many other countries, their leadership if not their people.  Neither major US party promises to do anything but continue to stumble over themselves in supporting Israel better.  Even progressives insist we must defend Israel, just with a little "restraint" which has been spoken of endlessly even by Biden but never appears, so more weapons keep getting sent, not to mention deep western intelligence support for Israel.

Israel has long had the "Samson Option," in which if they are losing badly, they don't bother nuking Palestinians and Arabs next door, which would just blow back, but go straight to nuking Europe for not supporting them well enough.  It's like a doomsday machine.

There may not be a Middle East when this is over, indeed there may not be a Europe, UK, USA, or world either.

None of this seems to reach the minds and hearts of true blue Democrats or MAGA Republicans.  Democrats over 25 years old focus on likely useless Trump trials with hardly a thought about Gaza, and Trump promises to support Israel even better, blaming Biden for Israel not having defeated Hamas yet.

Meanwhile fascism is already here in the west, including cracking down on protestors and making pro Palestinian slogans and other speech shadow banned if not illegal, no matter who becomes next President.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Long dismissed as cheap, tawdry, and pornographic, this was the movie that got longtime movie mogul Richard Zanuck axed from Fox by the Board of Directors because it created a stink so bad.  Unsuitable for the brand image of Fox, they believed.

(Also, the following year's Myra Breckinridge didn't help either, for similar reasons.)

Zanuck's instructions to established nudie film auteur Russ Meyer were simple: Make it push the limits of the R rating as much as possible, make it cheap, and make it a hit.  Meyer nailed the second two.  The film quickly earned nearly 10 times its cheap production cost of $900,000, and the long since deceased screenwriter and much more famous movie critic Roger Ebert claimed it had made $58 million, which might have been an overstatement then.  (Google insists it made $9 Million...that's simply how much it made in 1970, and in spite being restricted to X rated theaters.)

Sadly, the newly constituted ratings board decided to punish this film for various reasons, including I believe the general social outlook (which is much more libertarian about sex and drugs than you will generally find elsewhere...and in that the antithesis of it's turgid predecessor Valley of the Dolls).  So it got an X rating, which quickly had become to mean "Pornographic" and wouldn't be shown in most cinemas.

Only much later, in 1990, was a new category NC-17 established which better describes this movie.

It is NOT pornography, though there is some (fake) sex barely being seen, in addition to a quite a bit of social and morality instruction.  Even though I'm generally critical of such things, I think this movie is so educational about sex-related social relations every teenager should see it about 3 times, to get the whole message.  It is very dense.

Even Russ Meyer has always said this was his best film.  Because this time he had the resources of a major studio, as well as studio constraints, the quality is first class and without the frequent self-indulgence that mars most of his other movies (I love the less violent and more sexier ones anyway).

Russ Meyer is able to make every frame of the movie tell the story, just like a silent film.  As fitting the fact that it used no established star actors, in order to keep costs down.  Instead, it had Playboy Centerfold Girls (which is a high honor, only 12 of the most beautiful applicants get picked every year) playing the lead characters (in an all girls band) with the music actually done by the famous Wrecking Crew songwriter and musicians (it's damn good).

And those Playboy centerfold girls are incredibly beautiful, largely inspiring this message.  One of them has always been the pick of my generation as the most beautiful and incredible Centerfold Girl ever: Cynthia Myers.  (Officially, she's in the top ten of all time.)  In this movie she plays the part of a young woman who hasn't yet discovered she's bisexual but just isn't attracted to the awful men in this movie (nobody could blame her), and has her first lesbian sex.  This was definitely boundary pushing for the time.  

Cynthia does great in this movie, but sadly didn't much appear in later movies.  It seems she spent much of the rest of her life attending Playboy events and cult screenings of this very film, which has become one of the top cult classics of all time.  Then sadly she died of lung cancer in 2001.  (I know women who always smoked "to stay thin," I suspect that was like her.  I smoked when I last lived in LA, and I wish I had met her.)

Russ Meyer was a long time friend of Hugh Hefner since World War Two and shot some of the first centerfolds, including his own first wife (and producer of many of the earlier movies) Eve Meyer.

Well known cult film maker John Waters called Beyond the Valley of the Dolls the best made film ever.  There's now a Criterion Edition, and it's being screened at the Academy of Motion Pictures.  It's a complete critical turnaround, which it deserves because it's a miracle and it's a gem (and not to mention making more money without end).  The X rating kept it out of a lot of theaters, and Russ Meyer got little respect from critics in the US for quite some time (and even now he has lots of abysmal reviews in IMDB, whose viewers seem to reflect critical attitudes of decades ago).

There is of course no "real" sex in the movie at all, though as far as I'm concerned every second looking at sultry Cynthia Myers is about as good as sex if not better.  And the other women are very smart and good looking too.  The guys not so much, it's Meyer's formula to have smart ladies and dumb (or evil) guys.  And the blacks play the most pro-social characters of all.  Because Meyer is anti-racist and anti-sexist, he reverses the stereotypes.

Sadly, along with having a libertarian view of sex and drugs, Meyer was very anti-Communist.  At least one of his villains in his early violent "Gothic" series of movies is a Communist, who gets told off.  Meyer avoided such preaching in later movies, made it more about how wonderful sex is, but when making his own movies could never get away from certain self indulgences, showing himself, bragging, and endless photos of radios and other gadgets.  In Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, he does much better, restricting himself to views of Los Angeles which help make the movie seem real and grounded, though it's mostly shot in surplus sets in the Fox back lot with hardly any location shooting.  No new sets were built either.  All to keep it cheap, but it all works perfectly anyway, thanks to clever camera work.

Still, I also love the sex positive attitude which permeates two of the later Russ Meyer movies: Supervixens and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens.*  The latter is a long time favorite of mine, though I recognize its flaws, more than the others it speaks to me with regards to the lack-of-orgasm issues the man is having, and his solution, which of course involves the lady with the biggest boobs (played by Anne Marie) that Meyer has ever had in one of his movies.

(*Sometimes this is mistaken a parody of The Country.  It's obviously not The Country or anywhere in the USA for that matter, which is very sex negative as a whole.  It's a twisted, still deeply flawed, but much more sex positive society in which Meyer unfolds his better loving morality play.)

I only wish I'd seen these movies in high school as part of education about the social aspects of sexual relations, but our prudish society wouldn't permit it.  It could have saved me decades of learning the hard way.

 

Hunter Biden's Laptop

https://x.com/DrewHolden360/status/1801016724252188861

This looks very bad, for both Hunter Biden and his father, but also the US/Western media, western intelligence agencies, and more.

At the bottom of all this, we must start with the fact that western intelligence agencies have been operating in Ukraine since the end of World War II.  Their aim was always first to break Ukraine out of the Soviet Union, then out of Russia, then out of Russian influence of any kind (and, ultimately, to use Ukraine as a wedge to break apart the not only the Putin government but Russia itself).

To that end, they Must Have actively facilitated the purchase of more and more of Ukraine by key western interests, including especially Western geopolitical decision makers, so they have a piece of the pie (and therefore their ass on the line).  In fact, much of Ukraine has indeed been bought up by Western interests, and now we know it includes political leaders.

The leadership should have understood that they don't want any of this traceable back to them.  They wouldn't want anything that even looked like corruption.  They should have avoided having their significant others involved with it in any way.

Instead...

And after the word got out, intelligence agencies have worked overtime to try to keep a lid on it.

To me, this is not just about politics, Biden v Trump.  It's about empire, the ugly way it works, the impunity of people at the top, and the fascism that western intelligence agencies are comfortable dishing out to keep the game going.

I commented on this story and was myself immediately hounded by someone who by all appearances is an intelligence troll.  This was the only time I can remember that I got such immediate pushback.

People who are trying to say this is not corruption, this is Russian Disinformation (a never proven claim) seem to believe that we have to have a smoking gun for everything.

No we don't.  In cases like this, the appearance of corruption is sufficient.  And by this time, we've got a whole catalogue of appearances.

Also, Biden defenders seem to think that if European Countries were involved beforehand, that proves it was never about Biden.

IOW, they seem to be starting from the position that every political leader is innocent until proven guilty.

That may be the way it works in a court of law (sometimes), but it's not the way it works in business and politics.

In fact, the assumption we should always start with is every big business and government operation is riddled with corruption, on all sides, until proven otherwise.  In modern capitalism, any business leader who isn't pushing on every possible lever is quickly dumped for someone else who will.

Given that the Biden family was up to their neck in corruption in this way, it's likely that many European leaders were also.  None of them wanted the cover to start unraveling.

Plus, they would well understand that protecting top US government officials was in their interests.  Those US government officials like Vice President Biden who had endless ways to reward "help" and punish "finks".

It's barely worthy of comment in the interests of political fairness that the Trump family is even more corrupt, and that deals that Jared Kushner made with Israel helped get Trump elected, etc.

Defending The Talmud

Here's a pretty good defense of the Talmud against widespread attacks now and going back to the beginning.

Those claiming that Zionism comes from the Talmud should realize that the Talmud existed for over a millenium before the emergence of modern Zionism, and furthermore the Talmud expressly forbids the establishment of a Jewish state by man (as does the Torah) and this was the mainstream belief of nearly all Jews before the Holocaust.  Modern Zionism was created by atheists, though it gained more traction among most religious Jews after the Holocaust and then also in a blitz of Hasbara in the 1960's.

Sex Drive Differences

I'm sticking with my earlier claims, based on my own experiences (including dating a hundred women but finding only a handful that were ever interested in sex) and understandings of history and biology.

However, at some point I may have to explain the large body of different results when this question has been studied scientifically, as reported here (curiously, keeping this apparently innocent WebMD page loaded causes my computer to use a LOT of energy, the cooling fan becomes very loud).

https://www.webmd.com/sex/features/sex-drive-how-do-men-women-compare

Basically the problem is that I'm mainly talking about drives and desires as something outside social influences but modified by it, whereas these articles are combining the two (as in fact, scientifically, they are not easy to separate).   My basic theory is that the "social influences" in which I'm mainly talking about religion (but also political beliefs) corral sexual desire (including sex differences in sexual desire) to their own ends.  After that corralling has occurred, all bets for finding innate sex differences are lost.

Right from the start you can sense the critical and antagonistic stance in this article, such when it says:

And those messages may have influenced the research that has been telling us men want sex more than women.

Such research is barely mentioned in this article, whose entire purpose is to get us to question (and highly if not completely discount it rather than taking a fair look at both sides).  (So, yes, there is research supporting my side, they say, but they are not describing or linking to it.)

Still, it's worth taking note of this critique.  I may have more to say later.

Masks work

This looks like the most current and definitive work on masking in preventing COVID and other respiratory diseases.

"Respirators" are best, followed by medical masks, etc. 

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23

I've seen from the very beginning a strong pushback on masks, distancing, and vaccines since the beginning of COVID-19.

Among people who vote Democratic, this is normally construed as coming from the right, and especially the MAGA populist (and fascist) right.

However, it permeates many elements of the left too, people vote for smaller (and in US likely unelectable) parties especially included.

You could consider this "war against the science" coming the "populist left and right."

But interesting, major governments including the US and UK pushed against many measures constantly.  This was especially true at the state level, such as in Texas where I live the governor attempted to overrule local masking laws.

Newspapers continually whined about not putting children back in schools, saying the science didn't support keeping them out (it did).  Ultimately it was not Trump but Biden who prematurely declared COVID over, leading to 100,000's of thousands of additional deaths in the "second wave."

So while institutions have been strong for vaccination (nothing wrong with that, say the oligarchs and corporations, as well as scientists) they have opposed in varying degrees other public health measures that are now fairly well understood (despite endless mis-interpretations of early studies being endlessly circulated in social media) to be effective.

So the establishment has never been speaking with one voice and with the science either, including the media.

Seeing this vast picture of dissent against science, much from the establishment itself (though it constantly memory-holes mistakes) makes it all look very intelligence/government coordinated.

Which could be exactly true on the "populist" left and right too.

On the left, it adds to further population culling (since they don't reproduce as much either).  It prevents left-liberal re-unification.

On the right, it adds another "galvanizing myth" to the pile.

Oped in Times proclaims Lab Leak theory best fit

Looks like 100 points, the most complete exposition I've seen of why lab origin seems the most likely.

No one should defend that it was American scientists, proposing the (never grant funded) Defuse project, that recommended using only BSL-2 (as in Wuhan) to save money.  This project was intended to genetically engineer viruses that would be identical in key ways to the pandemic virus, and the protocol ensured they would have maximum capability to jump species.

When dangerous research is allowed, many will seek ways to do it cheaper.  (Actually, GOF was banned in US, but special dispensation was given to fund it in China.)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html

I originally found this article quoted (not linked) by Dr Angela Rasmussen who simply smeared it as "factually incorrect" without refuting a single point.  (When they do respond, it seems scientists often just point to lengthy papers.  This is basically argument by intimidation, professional qualification, and obfuscation.)

Elsewhere it appears one of the arguments made against the lab leak theory is the argument that no animals tested positive for COVID at the wet market because no animals were tested at all.*  China denied there ever was a wet market where live animals were being sold and wanted to stop any reporting on this.  (However that is well established by other evidence.)  The relevant kind of bats (used by Wuhan researchers) were NOT being sold (which was why Wuhan trapped them in the wild from quite far away, and there is no evidence surrounding those sites of an earlier COVID infection, or anywhere in between).

*This argument, however, may be misleading, as in fact Chinese scientists immediately began testing animals in and around Wuhan, with their work published here.  They did not find a "proof" animal.   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35769892/

In 2023 it was suggested that Raccoon Dogs at the Wet Market were the intermediate host.  This was widely reported.  (There is still a lack of clear evidence pointing to this, only that Raccoon Dogs were being sold and could have been infected.)

Here's a scientific paper which argues against the Wet Market theory by examining the location of early cases and how they were ascertained.  (I think the Times article explores the location issue very well too.)

https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnae021/7632556?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

Here is an earlier paper, critiqued by the above one, which had proposed the Wuhan (Seafood) Market

https://zenodo.org/records/6299600

Here is a recent scientific paper favoring the Zoonotic Origin theory, the first one linked in a discussion of the NYTimes article.  On first scanning it looks pretty good and worth reading more carefully.

https://journals.asm.org/doi/epdf/10.1128/jvi.00365-23

Mental Masturbation on Porn

https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/the-logic-of-envy

Teach says that Porn is the means of escaping the need to fantasize, and hence "take action."

Generally I think Teach is full of shit.

I had a girl friend once who believed that fantasizing about women was as "bad" (for you and women and society) as any kind of porn, in effect, they are equivalent.

It is, roughly, my idea that they are indeed equivalent.

Few have a strong enough imagination to get anywhere at all.  I can, I can fantasize to the point of orgasm without any porn, but I can also tell you that it is incredibly hard work, often subject to getting derailed by fear, or falling away from fatigue.  So if you want to get the job done reliably, it's not easy to rely on it and I'm glad I don't have to.  Still, orgasm doesn't usually doesn't work without a lot of fantasy throughout and profoundly at the end.  So porn is like the sip of water your allowed to drink after each lap of the marathon, you might make it otherwise, but maybe not.  Noam Chomsky described porn as like having better eyeglasses.

I've sometimes myself even pondered if it were better to always be forced to fantasize, and hence strengthen the 'muscles' of fantasization.

But porn, being produced and sold by other people, may actually have just as much if not more socially redeeming value.  Effectively, it comes pre-screened and approved by others.  Here are the real (or fake) women you can fantasize about having sex with, not the monsters and demons of your imagination who will take you places nobody else knows.  Though as I've said, you probably won't get there without your imagination anyway.  It's not a mechanical process.  Synapses in your brain are ultimately what need firing.

Porn is like the snorkel in which you can keep on breathing air from the world outside of you until you meet yourself.

Teach is obviously a narcissist, and his "thinking" is often disgusting. 

While proclaiming the necessity of porn he demeans it and the people who use it, including himself.

However the same might be said for his critics, including commenter Guttermouth who writes:

2) I have so much professional, anecdotal, and epidemiological experience about men with porn that I find the assertion that porn has nothing to do with addiction offensively stupid, and I'm very reluctant to just call things "stupid" without qualification. I have seen otherwise pretty reasonable, decent men's lives absolutely annihilated by porn addiction, and it doesn't take long to see that most of them are the kind of people prone to getting addicted to lots of stuff.

Guttermouth's own Substack begins with the "warning":

If I sound awful, there's a very good chance I'm fucking with you. If you can't tell, it probably doesn't matter.

Reading Guttermouth further is indeed being fucked with, and not in a good way.  (But it may have some value nonetheless.  If you thought you were mentally ill, just read the blog by the antiporn shrink.)

Speaking as the man on the outside looking in, it seems to me that people have had (and maybe still) great sex, marriage, children, and all the things that are supposed to be good for one's soul can be just as unhappy as anyone else.  So why are they keeping it all to themselves, and knocking my tree too?  Apparently all the good things in life don't in themselves create a path away from being narcissistic.