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Bruce Dowbiggin

The China Syndrome: The Cover-Up Catastrophe

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A liberal wants happy endings. A conservative wants satisfactory endings. Liberal happiness usually involves great unhappiness. Conservative satisfaction usually means things that work.

In the Covid-19 crisis the West has sought a vaccine-powered happy ending where everyone goes to heaven but no one dies. As we see now,  a more realistic end game— that conceded some death and hardship— was needed for a satisfactory ending. What produced the former and actively suppressed the latter was China.

As we wrote in April of 2020, only the Chinese knew what was happening on Covid-19: Repeat. No one but the Chinese knew anything till at least March (2020). (U.S. President Donald) Trump only knew what he was told by his crack science team of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Karen Birkx, Dr. Anthony Redfield and the armies of CDC and Health Department apparatchiks. Who said in March that masks were ineffective. But now science proves they’re boffo. (In D.C. opinions are like belly buttons. Everybody’s got one.)

Trump is not an epidemiologist. He’s a businessman, a salesman whose focus was on preventing a total collapse of the economy. So when the initial calming sounds from his advisors proved fatally wrong, Trump played for time. He mobilized supply chains, supplied states with ventilators, PPE and beds. Even his bitter enemy Cuomo, governor of New York, was forced to concede that Orange Man Bad had done alright by the people of the Empire State. His policies did “flatten the curve”, preventing an early  meltdown of U.S. hospitals and their health system.

Likewise, Trudeau is not an epidemiologist. The PM got his talking points, largely, from his virus expert Dr. Theresa Tam (via the WHO). Reading from the Chinese script she scorned masks and the closing of borders. While Trump closed America’s borders and sanctioned China, Trudeau, Health Minster Patty Hajdu and senior public health officials insisted that the risk of transmission was low in Canada right up until early March. 

“When the risk level suddenly jumped to ‘high’ on March 15, the government scrambled to impose an economic lockdown to curb the spread of the virus” reports CBC.ca.

Which is where we have been since the fabled 15 days in 2020 to flatten the curve— the first of many Orwellian bromides to deflect from the tragedy of executive overreach.Now we have an extensive article saying just that.

In the West’s abject panic over the virus, says Tablet magazine in The Masked Ball of Cowardice, the assembled political and health elites of the West took their marching orders from China’s carefully manicured script on how they beat a virus that most everyone now concedes they launched themselves. The script was a lie that launched an estimated 4.5 million deaths worldwide.

“At the heart of the lockdown madness was the collective fantasy of controlling a common respiratory pathogen—a feat the epidemiology profession had agreed was impossible and self-destructive just months prior.”

In The Masked Ball of Cowardice Michael P. Senger documents how the pandemic can be explained by initial gullibility on alleged Chinese treatment of the virus and the subsequent attempts by the West to cover their ass for being suckered.  “…since “15 days to slow the spread”—from fear propaganda to masks to school closures and vaccine passes—has been a cover-up of catastrophe that was the original lockdowns and denial of insanity of trusting scientists and billionaires who treat information from China as real.”

A few samples from Senger’s blistering of the West’s elites. Starting with our favourite: the blunderbuss PCR tests.“Based on WHO’s guidance on COVID-19 testing, again citing Chinese journal articles, labs used, and continue to use, PCR cycle thresholds from 37 to 40, and sometimes as high as 45. At these cycle threshold levels, approximately 85% to 90% of cases are false positives.”

“The WHO’s PCR guidance was… quite possibly the deadliest accounting fraud of all time. According to coding guidance, if the decedent had either tested positive or been in contact with anyone who had, within several weeks prior to death, then death should be classified as COVID-19 death.”

Senger points out that in swallowing the Chinese prescription the West ignored the far-greater catastrophe of social costs. “In March 2020, the Dutch  commissioned a cost-benefit analysis concluding that the health damage from lockdown would be 6 times greater than the benefit. The government then ignored it, claiming “society would not accept” optics of an elderly person unable to get an ICU bed.”

Figures from Trudeau to (now former) NY state governor Andrew Cuomo hopped on board the Zero Covid train early. As we wrote in April 2020Justin Trudeau, has suggested that losing even one Canadian to the virus is not worth any economic benefit. In the U.S., the key health advisors to president Donald Trump talk about not being able to re-start society till the virus is stopped and no lives are in danger. This humanist position enjoys the approval of the mainstream media which has turned the Covid-19 death toll into a telethon of tragedy, bereft of context and precedent.

That implausible goal of crushing the virus at all costs has now resulted in a choked health-care system, untold millions dying or suffering from the isolation and desolation of lockdowns and, despite the buoyant stock market, the destruction of supply chains. To give just one example, August production of Toyota vehicles is to be slashed by 60,000 to 90,000 vehicles. Why? Microchips are impossible to source and petrified labour is staying home, not working.

We foresaw the supply-chain monster in March of 2020. One revelation that will not pass, however, is just how vulnerable North America’s indulged society is to events in China. The virus, which originated in Wuhan, has become the unwanted party guest who won’t leave till he’s soiled the carpets and broken the furniture as he plays air guitar. 

But it’s also informed Americans and Canadians that almost all their prescription drugs and a host of other products come exclusively from China. Or near enough. So those high-blood-pressure pills we gobble— especially the generic brands— are 95 percent dependent on Chinese labs after successive governments in North America allowed the business to migrate eastward. And supplies are dwindling.

This dependence has been around for some time now, waiting to emerge. It just took the Covid-19 emergency to make citizens aware. You certainly didn’t hear it it discussed in media circles when the new North American trade deal was being discussed… We can see why now. Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau is too busy currying favour with the geopolitical swells to watch out for his nation’s vulnerability. Like ceding our sovereignty on energy to the Saudis or Americans, it was getting in the way of him winning a seat on the UN Security Council in his priorities. 

As conservative radio host Jesse Kelly writes: I don’t understand. I was told repeatedly that you could just “pause” an economy as if it was Netflix. After all, someone got sick. Did “pausing” the economy and dumping trillions of unbacked currency into it cause widespread economic dislocation? Weird.

Weird indeed. And with Canada’s GDP dropping, about to get weirder.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx

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BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Collision Course: Boomers Love Canada. Millennials Want A Better Offer

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Canada is a nation of fissures. East versus West. French versus English. White versus indigenous. For much of its 157-year history its has overridden those divides to stand as an independent nation. Its ability to do so has, however, made it a very complacent partner in security.

Donald Trump has now exposed a new fissure, and this one just might be the kill shot to Confederation. In his brazen attempts to exploit the many vulnerabilities imposed on Canada by the Justin Trudeau government  Trump has asked a question that petrifies the Canadian establishment.

Would Canadians rather join the powerful U.S. and abandon a rickety Canadian union? Which future holds the greater attraction, being a state/ partner of America or continuing to go it alone in a world of ambitious nations like China, Russia and India? Uncle Sam or Sir John A.? (Wait, Canada has tossed aside the founder of Confederation. Who else is there? We’ll have to get back to you on that.)

The polling results are bracing. Companies setting out to answer Trump’s existential question have discovered that while Boomers and their sunset media still see Canada as a land of Terry Fox, Anne Murray and the 1972 Summit Series, under 50s see something different and dangerous. And they are willing to listen to offers. A stunning 43 percent from the 18-35 Millennial demographic say they are willing to join the U.S. if offered citizenship and asset conversion to USD. In the +55 bracket just 17 percent of Canadians would trade their citizenship.

In 18-35 polling, 65 percent say Trump’s demand that Canada shape up to keep doing business with America has made them doubt the future of the nation. (35 percent +55) When asked if it’s just a matter of time till the U.S. consumes Canada 31 percent say yes (11 percent +55). And 35 percent say Quebec or Alberta will leave Confederation within the decade (22 percent +55).

These polls hew closely to current voter preferences in the (maybe) upcoming federal election. In the Super Boomer category (65+) 48 percent will vote for for the Mark Carnivores. In the 50-64 demo that number is 41 percent. But flip the age demographic and it’s the opposite. Conservatives lead the 18-35 bracket with 45 percent support versus 21 percent for Liberals and NDP 20 percent. Young people are pissed.

It’s hard to look at these numbers and not believe that the romantic notion of Canada being proposed by PMJT is running out of runway. And, irony of ironies, the young fresh face from 2015 is a main culprit for the disillusionment now gripping younger Canadians. But ten hard years of watching Happy Ways become Hippy Ways have convinced many among Gen-X and Millenials that, barring an inheritance, there is little to attract them to staying in Canada.

While Boomers desperate to embrace Carney plaintively ask, “what was so bad about Trudeau?” the current children or grandchildren of Boomers have a long list of grievances from his chaotic time in the PMO. Inaccessible housing, escalating taxes, refusing to retire, self-absorbed culture appropriation (blackface), DEI/ ESG effect on white people, over-reliance on outdated government and hoarding healthcare facilities and doctors… the list is long.

American psychologist Lawrence R. Summers has heard Millennials in his practice. “Boomers hogged the economy and the world’s resources for their own financial gain and/or consumptive habits… They are often seen as greedy and wasteful, with no regard for what future generations will inherit.

“To put it another way, they’re frequently viewed as dinner guests who’ve eaten and drank pretty much everything set out on the table, leaving only scraps for those who came later to the party, even their own children.” A cursory look at inflated real estate prices— houses serving as cash boxes for Boomers— serves to illustrate this deep frustration.

Before you say, well, this disaffection with Boomers is the same everywhere, remember that 78-year-old  Donald Trump swung the youth vote last November, moving it 20 percentage points in his direction. Going on alternative podcasts and social media that young people identify with blunted what had always been a Democratic party asset, exposing its fossilized leadership.

Boomers are cranky about Elon Musk employing teenaged whiz kids to ferret out corrupt USAID spending. Democrat geezers driven crazy by the Musk DOGE youngsters then are reminded of the ages of some of the Founding Fathers in 1776.

James Monroe, 18

Henry Lee III, 20

Aaron Burr, 20

John Marshall, 20

Nathan Hale, 21

Banastre Tarleton, 21

Alexander Hamilton, 21

Benjamin Tallmadge, 22

Robert Townsend, 22

Gouveneur Morris, 24

Betsy Ross, 24

James Madison, 25

Henry Knox, 25

Oops. The Canadians generation gap is hopelessly self inflicted. While America still retains a core culture, Trudeau has made sure Canada is seen more as a hotel than a nation. Bragging that Canada is a postmodern entity with no core culture (outside of hockey and equalization) he has demonized Canada’s founders as racist and genocidal by flying the Canadian flag at half mast for six months to assuage “settler guilt”. He has diluted the culture, importing millions who see Canada as a way stop to America or a place to launder money/ deal drugs.

He has glorified globalism through climate and gender agendas. He has continued his father’s alienation of the West and its energy industry. He has allowed the nation to be the world’s choice destination for laundering dirty money so that, now, few in the world trust the Canadian government on security and defence.

That’s seemingly okay with his aging core. Bu the question now is can 45-year-old CPC leader Pierre Poilievre ride the culture wave? Can he be bold and make its his own as Trump made 18-35 year olds his shock troops in 2024? Poilievre has done a sober, predictable rollout of policy.  What he needs, however, is to emulate Trump, showing the Liberals as geezers, the NDP as enablers and the decrepit media as propagandists. It’ll take courage. He won’t get CBC/ CTV/ G&M to help him quit so what?

Donald Trump is going to crucify the Libs/ NDP.  He wants to hear from a different partner in negotiations. Poilievre has to ignore the noise and negotiate a future that young Canadians can buy into.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

All Bets Are Off: Why Prop Betting Scares Sports Leagues, Police

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Sunday’s Super Bowl concluded another season of wagering on the sport made great by gambling. With billions wagered legally— and billions wagered illegally—the NFL is a Frankenstein of the betting industry. Everything is done to create parity while simultaneously promoting chaos. When other leagues talk about success they are talking about the NFL’s colossal gambling industry.

The penetration of betting has only increased with legalization in Canada (Ontario is the only “open” legal market at the moment) and the United States (38 states currently allow sports wagering). It has gotten to the point where sports bettors in Las Vegas, for decades the only legal spot for sports gambling, complain that Nevada is falling behind its neighbours. Some drive across state lines to wager on sports offerings not made in Vegas.

We could do a small book on all the new betting applications that have sprung up with sharps applying stock-market analytics and trading strategies to break down a football game. But for today we’ll concentrate on the device that has turbo-charged public betting in the past generation: Proposition bets. And the enormous risk they bring.

In the bad old days when gambling was underground, dominated by organized crime, football betting meant the money line (who will win), sides (by how many points) and totals (how many points would be scored in as game). The range of options within these parameters was limited. You could parlay (two bets), tease (two or more choices with alternate odds) or do future bets.

Then along came proposition bets (props). There are propositions on everything from how many yards player X will run for, how many interceptions Player Y will throw and how many touchdowns player Z will score. There are also team props. The range of props covers almost any result generated by a football game— and a few generated by halftime shows and coin flips.

When props first began to catch the public interest, they were a novelty. Snobs saw them as sucker bets for squares. In Vegas, books would stage a glitzy launch ten days before the game to announce their props. No more. The first props for SB LIX were out minutes after the conference final games were decided. The brushfire is now a conflagration.

The two weeks before SB LIX were saturated with experts breaking down the teams, their predilections and their models for predicting prop winners. In a game with no appreciable favourite this meant every microchip of data being examined. (We had at least a dozen props then added a couple more during the game to hedge against any losers.)

The great fallibility of prop betting is their individual nature. With totals and sides the results are determined by efforts of the 92 NFL players allowed to suit up each week. Outside of the QBs, kickers, coaches and perhaps the referees, no single person could determine a W or L. Not so with props.

A player can drop a pass or miss a tackle— affecting his prop— without anyone being the wiser. The NFL scrutinizes players for erratic patterns, but on a single basis anything is possible for a player who is being influenced by bettors. Integrity of the product is paramount for the NFL and its gambling partners. So a rogue player is like a communist in Joe McCarthy’s America.

There is also betting on non-football props concerning length of national anthem, colour of Gatorade used to douse the winning coach and clothing choices of the halftime performers. Here, bettors are truly on their own as the NFL has no control on Kendrick Lamar’s playlist. (Considering KL’s associates “in the hood” this a very Wild West way to lose money) own the colour of Gatorade used (yellow).

So far the NFL has avoided any public gambling scandal like the one that landed  the personal translator for Dodgers’s star Hideki Ohtani in jail for tipping off  gamblers. (So far MLB has managed to wall off Hideki from the crimes). But the possibilities are there in NFL and other sports where a player compromised by debts, drug issues or sexual activity can be leveraged for profit.

The league with the most visible prop problem is the NBA with its small rosters (15 players game day). For a reminder the NBA was forced to admit that there is a current police probe into player Terry Rozier, now of the Miami Heat. “In March 2023, the NBA was alerted to unusual betting activity related to Terry Rozier’s performance in a game between Charlotte and New Orleans,” NBA spokesman said. While the NBA has cleared Rozier police area not satisfied.

In the 2023 matchup between the Hornets and the New Orleans Rozier pulled himself from the game after just nine minutes. As a result Rozier finished well below his prop bet of 32.5 combined points, assists and rebounds. Bettors howled about the suspicious nature of Rozier’s exit with a foot problem.

What made cops suspicious was that the network of gamblers placing money on Rozier was the same network that had allegedly manipulated former Raptor Jontay Porter’s prop numbers. Porter has been banned for life over charges he shaved numbers for the nefarious characters cited in the rosier story. Police are still investigating him.

The NBA is still reverberating from the 2007 scandal of referee Tim Donaghy who used his knowledge of the NBA to bet on professional basketball games and tip off crimes figures. He was banned for life and sentenced to 15 months in prison. Now released from prison Donaghy continues to warn about the vulnerability of betting NBA games.

Then there is the risk associated with U.S. college athletics now that players are paid to attend a certain college. Money and temptation flow freely in the new portal system that allows players to transfer schools midway through their eligibility.

Sunday’s game produced a one-sided windfall for Eagles’ bettors and the usual controversial referee calls did not affect the outcome. But it should not be seen as a reason to be less vigilant, particularly with props.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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