COVID-19
Researchers run up the score on ‘journalists’ – Many conspiracies are not so theoretical after all
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Ian Madsen
Conspiracy Theorists Beat Authorities in Credibility
Journalistic objectivity, curiosity, skepticism, neutrality, and even impartiality are in decline.
It is not merely how quickly and savagely that opinion analysis, or commentary elements of most news organizations are to dismiss challenges to establishment claims, pronouncements and proposals. The bigger disappointment is that the ‘news’ side swiftly dismisses or contradicts anything that goes against what government or government-aligned officials, and spokesmen, declare.
Nowhere was this more evident than in Covid-era propaganda. Or, rather, outright disinformation was disseminated. Often ‘facts’ were wrong – and their defenders knew better.
A basic glaring fabrication was defended for years. It was the cover story that Covid first leapt to human beings in a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan, China. This was, to some, apparently less ‘racist’ than a lab leak from the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology. This in effect conveniently protected those involved in the research (such as including those in the U.S. government who financed it).
More Covid fallacies: the fatality rate was high – but in reality it was (lower than the flu for the vast majority of people); ‘social distancing’ of two metres could stop transmission; and everyone was at equal risk (yet children and youth had negligible risk; the old or obese far more). Also, that lockdowns would stop or that newly developed vaccines would work. Yet more: cloth and surgical masks were protective while vaccines were better than natural or acquired immunity. The biggest fallacy: health authorities knew what they were doing.
Several earlier infectious disease scares failed to have prepared experts (SARS-2003, West Nile, Zika, MERS, Ebola, Dengue Fever, others). Also, despite years of experience, proper information, protocols, procedures, facilities, equipment, personnel or supplies.
Related fallacies were that massive Covid-panic spending was noninflationary, or, that inflation was ‘transitory’, still cause pain today. ‘Modern Monetary Theory’ pundits encouraged governments and central bankers to monetize the debt issued to fund handouts and stimulus schemes. Critics who were castigated for warning that Canada’s government health care was disaster-bound are now validated.
Another sinking Establishment battleship is the Climate ‘Crisis’ lobby’s catastrophizing. The shrillest claim is that Earth’s, supposed, rapid warming is an ‘existential threat’. This fantasy is used to justify any and all countermeasures, no matter how destructive or expensive.
Rational adaptation to warming has been ignored: moving away from coastal areas (subject to rising sea levels), strengthening infrastructure, using more fireproofing, augmenting water supplies, changing agricultural practices, altering outdoor work hours, and employing more air conditioning.
Predictions of warming over the past thirty years have been repeatedly exaggerated. Heat-related deaths still far outnumber those of cold. Another claim, that carbon dioxide is ‘evil’, is false; it is a plant food that increases crop yields dramatically.
Climate crusaders claim that solar and wind energy can reliably and cheaply replace fossil fuels. That is, again, incorrect. Yet, still widely supported by politicians and the media. One related example is the promotion of heat pumps to replace gas furnaces, despite being more expensive to buy, and to run than natural gas furnaces are.
A related fallacy is that ‘green’ and, more honestly, anti-hydrocarbon Environmental, Social and Governance, ‘ESG’ investment funds outperform regular stock market indexes. That has been disproven.
‘Conspiracy Theorists’: Many touchdowns. Authority Figures and Mainstream Media: Zero.
Remain skeptical.
Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Alberta
Crown recommends 9 years in prison for Freedom Convoy-inspired border blockade protesters
From LifeSiteNews
Originally charged with conspiracy to commit murder, Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert were convicted of mischief and weapons offences during the Coutts blockade in 2022. They’ve already spent more than two years in prison awaiting their trial.
The Crown recommended nine years in prison for two men linked to the 2022 Freedom Convoy-inspired border blockade protest in Coutts, Alberta.
On August 29th, Crown prosecutor Steven Johnston declared that Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert, who were convicted of mischief and weapons offences at the 2022 Freedom Convoy, should receive nine years in jail despite already spending more than two years in prison awaiting their trial.
“Mr. Carbert and Mr. Olienick believed they were at war. They were prepared to die for their cause. The very real risk is that a firefight would have occurred,” Johnston claimed.
Olienick and Carbert have already spent more than two years in prison after they were charged with conspiracy to commit murder during 2022 Freedom Convoy-inspired border blockade protest in Coutts that protested COVID mandates.
Earlier in August, they were finally acquitted of that charge and instead found guilty of the lesser charges of unlawful possession of a firearm for a dangerous purpose and mischief over $5,000. Olienick was also found guilty of unlawful possession of an explosive device.
Olienick and Carbert have been jailed since 2022 when, at the same time the Freedom Convoy descended on Ottawa to protest COVID restrictions, they joined an anti-COVID mandate blockade protest at the Alberta-Montana border crossing near Coutts. The men were denied bail and kept in solitary confinement before their trial.
At the time, police said they had discovered firearms, 36,000 rounds of ammunition, and industrial explosives at Olienick’s home. However, the guns were legally obtained and the ammunition was typical of those used by rural Albertans. Similarly, Olienick explained that the explosives were used for mining gravel.
Now, they are being recommended to spend nine more years in prison despite their lawyer pointing out that they have already spent 929 days in jail, which equates to nearly four years given the accepted valuation of granting extra credit for time served while awaiting trial.
Justice David Labrenz is set to give his decision on September 9th.
The men were arrested alongside Christopher Lysak and Jerry Morin, and all four were charged with conspiracy to murder. At the time, the “Coutts Four” were painted as dangerous terrorists and their arrest was used as justification for the Emergencies Act, which allowed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to use draconian measures to end both the Coutts blockade and the much larger Freedom Convoy occurring thousands of kilometers away in Ottawa.
Under the EA, the Trudeau government froze the bank accounts of Canadians who donated to the protest. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23 after the protesters had been cleared out. At the time, seven of Canada’s 10 provinces opposed Trudeau’s use of the EA.
Recently, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Trudeau was “not justified” in invoking the Emergencies Act.
Many are pointing out that the two were being unjustly held as political prisoners similar to those in communist countries.
It’s unclear why the two Alberta men are denied bail while dangerous criminals are allowed to roam free thanks to Trudeau’s catch and release policy.
Indeed, this policy has put many Canadians in danger, as was the case last month when a Brampton man charged with sexually assaulting a 3-year-old was reportedly out on bail for an October 2022 incident in which he was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a dangerous weapon.
COVID-19
Australian Senate report ignores obvious: excess deaths began after COVID jab rollout
From LifeSiteNews
By David James
It is considerably more likely that the sudden jump in excess deaths was caused by the vaccines rather than the virus. The same pattern is being repeated across heavily vaccinated countries.
When the Australian Federal Senate announced an inquiry into excess mortality in Australia, there was little hope the participants would undertake a dispassionate examination of the possible effects of vaccines on the population. The report has now been released and it did not disappoint; or, rather, it did disappoint.
The report was an exercise in misdirection and concealment by bureaucrats, industry bodies, and political parties. It did, though, settle the question of whether what the Australian authorities did was due to incompetence or darker motives. Based on the non-arguments proffered it is clear that there has been a sustained and organized exercise in lying.
The Senate committee, according to the state broadcaster, the ABC, found that “COVID-19 was the main cause of excess deaths in 2021, 2022, and up to August 2023”. It is a message that has been repeated across the mainstream media, providing an apparent reason to forget about the whole COVID problem.
Bindi Kinderman, general manager of the People and Place Division of the ABS, told the inquiry COVID-associated deaths were behind the unusual rise in death cases between 2021 and August 2023, adding that “in 2020, COVID-19 ranked as the 38th leading cause of death in Australia. In 2021, it moved up to the 34th position.”
Apart from the obvious problem that the 34th leading cause of death is hardly likely to be responsible for extreme changes to death levels, the ABS found in its own reporting that in 2021 the mortality rate in Australia from respiratory diseases was the second lowest on record (after 2020). There were 1,122 deaths attributable to COVID-19, less than a third of the number who died from influenza in 2019.
That suggests that any attempt to blame Covid-19 for the excess mortality had to begin at 2022 – after the mass vaccination.
References to 2021 were only made to create the false impression that the excess deaths started earlier than they actually did. The reason? Because there was a desire to avoid comparisons of what happened before the mass inoculation with what happened after.
The deception becomes especially obvious after looking at the ABS’s own data on excess deaths. In 2020, when Australians were being warned that a deadly disease was ravaging the country, excess mortality was actually negative: minus 3.1 per cent. In 2021 it was a comparatively modest 1.6 per cent above average. But in 2022, after the mandating of jabs, it soared to 11.7 per cent before falling to 6.1 per cent in 2023.
Additionally, in 2022 the number of deaths from Covid increased more than nine times from the 2021 level, invalidating the claim that the “vaccines” provided protection.
READ: Supreme Court of Canada refuses to hear high-profile cases against COVID mandates
It is routinely pointed out that “correlation is not causation”; that just because two things coincide does not necessarily mean one causes the other. That also works in reverse. Without some kind of correlation there is no reason to look for causation. There is no correlation between COVID infections, which the ABS said started in March 2020, and excess mortality. So why would the virus suddenly have started causing excess deaths in 2022, when by that time it had mutated and become less deadly? The timeline does not add up.
A study entitled Too Many Dead by the Australian Medical Professional’s Society (AMPS) makes this point. “Why did the official death rates attributable to COVID-19 disease only become notable after the vast majority of Australians had received allegedly ‘safe and effective’ vaccines for the infection? Furthermore, why did the much milder Omicron variant take such a toll on a heavily vaccinated population, if indeed the much-repeated therapeutic claim of protection from severe illness and death was in effect?”
It is considerably more likely that the sudden jump in excess deaths was caused by the vaccines rather than the virus. The same pattern is being repeated across heavily vaccinated countries. According to the OECD, excess mortality is still high, at levels comparable with what happens during war time. In Australia excess mortality is still running about 10 per cent above average, according to the OECD. A study in the European Society of Medicine into the effect of vaccine boosters in Australia has found there is a “strong correlation” with the excess mortality.
A dissenting report by Senator Ralph Babet, who instigated the inquiry, makes the most interesting reading. Babet notes that there was a lot of suppression of submissions, which is unusual in such an inquiry. Only half were uploaded for public viewing.
“The submissions that the committee chose to suppress by taking as ‘unpublished correspondence’ include those from professors, doctors, medical specialists, academics, actuarial and subject matter experts, as well as concerned Australian citizens,” Babet wrote. He pointed to delays and road blocks, unreliable or unavailable data, and limited investigation of vaccine-related deaths.
It is no surprise that almost no-one will come forward to take responsibility for what appears to be the greatest man-made medical catastrophe in Australian history. It is no surprise that politicians, bureaucrats, health bodies and industry groups lack collective conscience and honesty. They are only interested in lying to protect themselves.
The question that remains unanswered is: “What kind of government and health system is left once it has lost its integrity and credibility?”
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