Re: Google Groups

There are no 'human rights' Only the Law. And the Law is what people will ultimately tolerate being applied to them.

I can well imagine in the so called 'flyover states' that people would simply ignore any edict to relinquish weapons.

In the UK the current ULEZ cameras covering greater London are being destroyed - up to 40% are now inoperative. That by law is not tolerated

But no one in the UK really wants to own a gun. The place is too crowded for safe gun use outside a range. Stray shots can carry far too far. The positions that the deer hunters use are all carefully arranged to shoot downwards. I've been spattered with bird shot at extreme range, too (200m). Even though you are unlikely to receive serious damage much over

As an infant, I nearly died of measles, which became almost unknown once the vaccine became available, until recent fallbacks in vaccination rates. My father (a fit champion swimmer) died of polio when I was two, which is on the verge of being eliminated worldwide other than Afghanistan/Pakistan where the vaccine has been less accepted.

Vaccines are good. - Doubleplusgood!

Were there reliable, independent sources of information back in those days?

The question is not “who”, the question is “how”. There are well-known techniques for verifying information. The good journalists know about those.

She got us through the pandemic, much more successfully than some other countries (I can mention names, if you like). That took the courage to act quickly and decisively, which she had.

Wow, I guess we can count that as a step forward, at least.

There’s always a new twist on the “conspiracy”, isn’t there?

That's a curious argument to make while discussing China and Russia. It certainly didn't work that way for the last Tsar of Russia at the end of WWI, nor for the Nationalist Chinese government after WWII. Of course Stalin and Mao both found very effective ways of achieving such population reduction while consolidating their power, without the many risks of going to war.

Almost within range of being on topic! But invading Taiwan wouldn't do anything to solve that problem for China. What good is owning the country where there used to be a major chip fab before the tech and workers were inevitably shipped out or blown up as soon as the invasion started? Of course the US will be prepared to destroy all the rare fab equipment before the Chinese reach it, if indeed they don't have time to simply move it to another country.

Are you sure? Mainland Chinese fab technology is certainly capable of making chips for drones, and how would one know what their capacity to fulfill military orders of lower-spec chips is?

Russia's chip manufacturers are apparantly focusing on FPGA-based computer designs, which I find interesting. but in practice I suspect they'll be buying most parts from China.

They're more likely to try and redirect public frustrations about a declining local economy or ineffective leadership by blaming problems on foreign powers. They may prefer to fight a war against the US than a civil war in China itself. Especially if they pester the US or an allied country enough that they actually make the first move, not unlike Zelenskiy in Ukraine.

Of course not. People believed what happened in their village, and looked with deep suspicion on what was reported from elsewhere.

Newspapers might be read by those that could, but not necessarily believed.

A bit like the rural US states today.

The rise of information from elsewhere coincided with the start of radio broadcasting around 1920.

The rise of people who actually believed what they said seems to have been around 1950

Well no, there are not.

Especially when it comes to data interpretation.

"Rise in air traffic since WWII triggers global warming"

Consider that.

or

"Global warming triggers rise in carbon dioxide"

or

"Rise in number of people declaring themselves to be transgender shows evolution is happening"

All these are the sorts of headlines that are perfectly in line with what headlines say, but they are all expressing *metaphysical* propositions. Propositions that you cannot proved to be either true OR false.

The essence of a good conspiracy theory is that it *might* be true. Just. If you are reasonably ignorant.

For all I know King Charles *is* a giant lizard when he goes to bed at night.

And then there is misleading by omission.

"The rally was attended by only 30 villagers"

But 30,000 activists were bussed in from London and other major cities.

"The minster was caught with his pants down" ...when a gas blast destroyed the wall to his toilet.

And then there is misleading information that is never actually claimed to be true..

"Professor H calculated that Windscale would result in over 3,000 excess deaths from cancer"

...using a model of radiation damage since shown to be totally false.

You simply cant police it 'fairly' because no one knows what the truth actually *is*.

The current drive towards suppressing misinformation relies on a religious dogma: E.g. IF you believe in catastrophic man made climate change THEN anyone who disagrees is ipso facto 'spreading false information'.

It's no different from Galileo and the Church.

All this is cat belling nonsense. We know what we would like. Facts. But who will get them, and why would they bother when lies are far more interesting, and profitable?

NZ was lucky in that it was by and large a self contained and isolated country that only Tolkien Tourists tend to visit.

They could enforce a national quarantine and survive.

Why would big Pharma *not* seek to make shitloads of cash out of promoting *their* vaccines above the competition? That is their *duty to their shareholders*.

It's a lot cheaper to slip a brown envelope to a politician, scientists or health minister than it is to develop a better vaccine.

It's just *normal business practice*. No conspiracies needed.

You hire a Saudi Princeling as a 'political consultant' for $5million, in order to to sell your fighter jets to Saudi. The fact that he is married to the defence secretaries sister is simply no part of you concern...

In China 40% of any project cost goes to paying of the officials who need to sign the paperwork to let you do it.

In the USA and EU 'political donations' to both sides are simply sound business practice.

There is nothing secret about this at all.

In Africa they don't even bother to hide what the are doing behind a false screen at all.

"Corruption is a Western concept" say the ANCs lawyers. In Africa, it's just how you look after your family or tribe.

I don't understand how anyone with any experience of the world would think that to say that business is routinely corrupt is peddling a conspiracy theory. Why wouldn't it be?

It's got several names. Rent seeking. State capture. Pork Barrel politics. Basically any time government is swinging large amounts of someone else's money, you just feed a donations to the politicians or civil servants who make the decisions to ensure some or all of it comes your way.

That is the way the world *actually* works.

So what was this “balance” you were talking about?

A balance of *power*, dear.

How did you not understand that?

A tripartite society, concerned with the rule of law, the use of law to maintain the peace and the use of the army to guard the realm, and the moral arbitration confined to archbishops and other clerics.

The army is still personally responsible to the King by the way. Its not a question of arriving at 'right' decusions, its a question of having a consensus and a balance to stop absolute power corrupting the whole mechanism of government as it seems to have done today.

TNP, as time goes by and more and more truth comes out I'm sure evidence will overwhelm your statements above, it's already starting. Take the time to watch these two videos. The first looks at the effects of midazolam which killed thousands but was attributed to covid. The second looks at vaccines.. He also, as an aside remark, points out that it was omicron which finally stopped the covid deaths.

Bob.

YouTuber, Susan Oliver, and her dog Cindy, deal with John Campbell in multiple videos:

She also gives an interesting discussion of AstraZeneca Covid vaccine.

Reaction as I expected. :-)

He didn't wrte the papers or create the data.

Bob.

There are many bad academic papers, Campbell picks them and misrepresents the results to boost his YouTube subscribers. If you watched Susan Oliver's critiques, it might become clearer to you. No one wants to watch John Campbell repeatedly telling them the pandemic is over, so he tells them some bollocks, about a vaccine conspiracy, and they continue subscribing.

I did learn one new pithy idea...

Brandolini's law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

Several things show up in your text. You refer to him as Campbell so your opinion is biased before you start. You make no mention of peer reviewed. You tell me one persons review is accurate and Dr. Campbell is bollocks but that just means you like one narrative more than another. You of course suggest that you opinion is fact but give no evidence.

Oh, I quite agree with that. Strange that you don't see it applies to narrative follows the most.

Anyway believe what you will, the truth is coming out but very, very slowly, many arses to cover.

Bob.

I have known about John Campbell for years. Yes, I had a very low opinion of him before your post. Call that bias, if you want.

I gave the evidence of the Susan Oliver videos. She points out errors in John Campbell's arguments. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand them, from first principles.