US had its coldest February in more than 30 years, NOAA reports

By Meteorologist Stephanie Weaver

Published 2 days ago

Winter storm sweeps across US

Major winter weather hammered much of the United States this week, with many areas seeing rare snow and unusually low temps. (Source: FOX)

LOS ANGELES – Last month’s dangerous winter storms in the United States caused record subzero temperatures, power outages for millions of homeowners and led to more than two dozen deaths.

It also brought one of the coldest Februarys in decades.

During February, the average temperature was 30.6 degrees Farenheight — 3.2 degrees below the 20th-century average. This ranks as the 19th coldest February in the 127-year period on record and the coldest February since 1989, according to a new climate report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

According to NOAA, the main driver for the weather across the U.S. during February was a strongly negative Arctic Oscillation (AO) during the first half of the month.

“This may have been the result of a sudden stratospheric warming event that occurred in January. The negative AO pattern favors a cold air outbreak over the central U.S., often referred to as a ‘polar vortex.’ A blocking pattern disrupted the jet stream, which prolonged the duration of this cold event,” NOAA wrote.

Video shows snow in New Jersey as winter storm hits

The video was recorded in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, on the evening of January 31 and into the early hours of February 1. Credit – buo01 on Twitter via Storyful

Below-average temperatures impacted a large portion of the country — from the Northwest to the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. In fact, six states — Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas — ranked among their 10 coldest Februaries on record, NOAA reported. Texas and Illinois ranked their 11th coldest.

“From February 7-21, large areas with temperatures more than 25°F below average were evident from parts of the northern Rockies and Plains to the central Plains. A station near Ely, Minnesota, bottomed out at −50°F on February 13 and 14,” NOAA wrote.

Based on preliminary data by NOAA, 62 all-time daily cold minimum temperature records were broken between Feb. 11-16 and 69 all-time daily cold maximum temperature records were broken between Feb. 15-16.

Texas’ historic winter storm

Several cities in Texas were impacted by February’s inclement weather.

According to NOAA, cities including Austin and Waco broke records for the longest freezing streak with temperatures below freezing between six to nine consecutive days from Feb. 10-19.

“Much of Texas endured the coldest air since December 23, 1989, during this period. Every county across Texas was under a Winter Storm Warning in mid-February. Wind chill values were below zero as far south as the Rio Grande River and into northeastern Mexico,” NOAA said.

Texas family builds outdoor ice rink during record winter storm

A family took advantage of freezing conditions in Hurst, Texas, and built an outdoor ice rink on February 16.

Winter storms and a blast of frigid air from the Arctic left behind record-setting low temperatures and icy conditions across the Lone Star State.

Millions of Texans were also without power amid subfreezing temperatures.

Alaska breaks records

Alaska also broke records, ranking among the coldest one-third of the 97-year period of record for the state.

In addition, Alaska had the coldest February on record in 22 years.

“The monthly high temperature for Anchorage reached a mere 30°F, making February 2021 the first month since December 1998 with all daily high temperatures remaining below freezing,” NOAA wrote.

RELATED: Severe winter storms will cause ‘widespread delays’ in COVID-19 vaccine shipments, CDC says

While the northern and eastern two-thirds of the state experienced below-average temperatures in February, the southwestern portion of the state, including the Aleutians, had temperatures near or above average for the month.

In fact, Alaska’s December – February average temperature was four degrees above the long-term average, ranking it among the warmest one-third on record.

Meteorological Winter warmer than average

Even as icy Arctic air dominated the nation, the overall winter (December – February) average temperature was 1.4 degrees above average, ranking it in the warmest third of the winter record.

In fact, above-average temperatures were observed across parts of the West, Southeast and New England.

RELATED: ‘8 days was an eternity’: Mom reunites with newborn quadruplets after being separated during Texas storm

According to NOAA, Maine ranked the third warmest and California ranked 12th warmest for the three-month period.

Meanwhile, the winter precipitation total was 6.10 inches, which was 0.69 inches below average, and ranked among the driest one-third of the 126-year period of record.

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/us-had-its-coldest-february-in-more-than-30-years-noaa-reports

FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2021

If, at this point, you’re dumb enough to get the not-vaccine,you really don’t have any excuse:

Utah’s chief medical examiner urged the public not to jump to conclusions about the death of a 39-year-old woman four days after she received the second dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine — insisting there is no evidence the jab was connected to her passing.

After receiving her second jab on Feb. 1, Kassidi Kurill became sick and was hospitalized. Four days later, the single mom died under mysterious circumstances.

But Dr. Erik Christensen, chief medical examiner for Utah’s Health Department, told Fox News that the tragic mom’s second dose and her death are only “temporally related.” “We don’t have any evidence that there are connections between the vaccines and deaths at this point,” he insisted. “We don’t have any indication of that.”

That’s a fascinating excuse. Now we know JFK didn’t wasn’t assassinated. The rifle firing and his death were only “temporally related”. Also, when did New York newspapers start using British slang? Americans don’t get “jabs”, they get “shots”. Is “jab” supposed to be friendlier and less frightening, or more progressive, somehow?

Any time you see someone babbling about evidence, you can be certain they are lying. In this case, the dead body of the woman with the material that was injected would be the evidence, as well as the syringe that was used, the bottle from which the material was taken, and so forth. It’s certainly possible that she died of West African Rat Disease or asymptomatic Ebola or even an excess of ennui, but Ockham’s Razor strongly suggests that it was the not-vaccine that killed her due to the known exposure and temporal relationship.

I don’t what the long-term effects of the genetic markers being applied to a statistically significant percentage of the population will be, but I can certainly think of a lot of different uses for them. And pretty much none of them are good. If you wouldn’t have a glowing target tattooed on your forehead, you probably shouldn’t submit to genetic therapy by people who openly talk about their desire to reduce the human population.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2021/03/dont-jump-to-logical-conclusions.html

Prologue to “A Critical Look at Rush Limbaugh”—Parts One and Two

March 11, 2021/1 Comment/in Conservatism, Featured Articles /by Hadding Scott

Like many of Rush Limbaugh’s listeners I felt a personal connection to him, but unlike many, I did not believe that he was practically infallible or always told the truth. I saw great merits in him but also weaknesses. “A Critical Look at Rush Limbaugh,” published by The Occidental Observer in late 2014, is largely a memoir of important occasions when Rush Limbaugh demonstrably had not been honest, and had served the political establishment rather than his own ideals or the people. We loved him, but he had let us down.

There were several purposes in writing this. Obviously, it was to educate the public, but this was not necessarily a disfavor to Rush Limbaugh. Suppose that he had made untrue statements only because he felt forced by circumstances: in that case it could be a relief for him, the alleviation of a moral burden, to find out that his audience “gets it.” On the other hand, while I was seeing positive changes in the Rush Limbaugh of 2014, the continuing pretense that he had practically never been wrong about anything was troubling, because it showed a lack of repentance. It was troubling, both that he was saying it and that the audience was accepting it. I wanted to call attention to Rush Limbaugh’s past failings so that returning to them would be difficult. I wanted to burn the bridges behind Rush Limbaugh so that he could not go back.

The critique seemed to attract wide attention. A few days after TOO published my two-part critique, Rush Limbaugh did something unusual. He spent his first hour ruminating over the “blogosphere” and “new media.” Based on the timing and some details in what he said, and the unusually subdued and thoughtful manner in which he spoke (not his usual boisterous persona), I believe that my criticisms were on his mind.

Significantly, he did not have any negative comment. On the contrary, he said that blogs and websites are part of the “alternative media” that he started with his syndicated radio show in 1988. About the creators of “new media,” he says:

Many of them are conservative, many of them are renegade conservative, but the point is, it is causing the Drive-By Media further panic, and the impact that all of this new media is having is clearly the erosion of the monopolistic mainstream media model. That deterioration is continuing. …

The American people — and I’m not being critical. You know me, the more the merrier, and the freer the speech, the better. I can deal with it. You know, I’m in a content content content business. I’m proud of my content, and I don’t make it up, and I don’t lie about it, so I got nothing to worry about. But the people in the Drive-Bys who have been living a lie for all these years are being exposed, and they are in a panic.

I had criticized him precisely for “living a lie.” He also referred to “being exposed,” and I certainly did expose him. He acknowledges that he could be a target of criticism from some “renegade conservatives” in the “new media” when he says: “I can deal with it. …. I got nothing to worry about.” His subdued tone suggested nonetheless that he had been affected by something.

Rush Limbaugh’s last years turned out to be his best. While he did not become 100% honest all the time, he did become more honest, and more valuable to his people. I was not alone in noticing this change; Don Black on Stormfront Radio also commented on it.

I certainly do not want to appear to claim credit for this, however. The important factor facilitating Rush Limbaugh’s evolution was not a screed that gave him pause on one day: rather, it was a change in practical circumstances, specifically the rise of Donald Trump.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2021/03/11/prologue-to-a-critical-look-at-rush-limbaugh-parts-one-and-two/

I don’t believe her eitherPiers Morgan understandsthe importance of not apologizingwhen you haven’t done anything wrong:

Meghan Markle wrote to ITV’s boss to complain about Piers Morgan hours before the Good Morning Britain co-host quit on the day the show scored its highest ever ratings and beat BBC Breakfast, it was revealed today.

The Duchess of Sussex insists she was not upset that Mr Morgan said he ‘didn’t believe a word she said’ in her Oprah interview – but was worried about how his comments could affect people attempting to deal with their own mental health problems, an insider told the Press Association.

Standing firm today, Mr Morgan told reporters outside his West London home: ‘If I have to fall on my sword for expressing an honestly held opinion about Meghan Markle and that diatribe of bilge that she came out with in that interview, so be it.’

On Monday Ms Markle went directly to ITV’s CEO Dame Carolyn McCall, the former boss of the (far) left-wing Guardian newspaper, who signed off on the broadcaster’s £1million deal to show the Oprah interview and said yesterday they were ‘dealing with’ the GMB host.

Mr Morgan is understood to have been ordered to apologise – but he refused and quit instead saying he had the right to tell viewers his ‘honestly held opinions’ and declaring: ‘Freedom of speech is a hill I’m happy to die on’.

Good for him. The deceitful, grifting Hellmouth whore simply can’t bear to take any criticism whatsoever, and she has destroyed everything she touched with the exception ofSuits, in which she was a tertiary and mostly irrelevant character. If he holds his ground, Morgan will end up coming out of this kerfluffle on top.

It’s rather amusing how the British press is having such a hard time figuring out why she hates the British Royal Family so much.

Meghan hates Princess Kate for the same reason every moderately attractive girl with ambitions of being the popular hot girl hates the beautiful head cheerleader. It’s nothing more than raw, unmitigated envy. Meghan can’t compete with Kate’s position, class, style, or popularity, and her genetics prevent her from ever being considered “an English Rose”, so naturally she hates the other woman with the passion of ten thousand burning hells.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2021/03/i-dont-believe-her-either.html

“Divorcity is our Strength”

Anytime I encounter determined use of the word "Diversity", I counter with the word "Divorce-ity".

WE do not need "diversity" in this country, WE need a national divorce from incompatible people.

If the marriage was ever good, I really cannot remember, but WE are well-into the angry language lessons already and inching toward domestic violence. WE badly need a divorce before one of us kills the other. Yeah, WE tried marriage counselors, on the Right and on the Left. Mostly, they were just egging on the fights. WE even tried arbitration, but the Supreme Court refused to hear any of it.

Even Wimmin can understand divorce-ity.

WE may need a required period of separation, WE divide up the property and the States and the Military and the kids, with the bills. But in the end, WE get a Final Decree of Divorce-ity. YOU go your way and I go mine. Go and Do whatever makes you happy. Sleep with the window open, for whomever you are expecting at night. Skip breakfast and finally lose weight. Learn a new hobby, like growing your own food. Take a trip on your own. But lose my number and don’t call me anymore.

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2021/03/when-rhetoric-works.html

Divorcity is our Strength.docx

Published on March 19, 2019

The Mismeasurements of Stephen Jay Gould

written by Russell T. Warne

Stephen Jay Gould, the famous 20th century paleontologist, published his most celebrated work, The Mismeasure of Man, in 1981. Gould’s thesis is that throughout the history of science, prejudiced scientists studying human beings allowed their social beliefs to color their data collection and analysis. Gould believed that this confirmation bias was particularly powerful when a scientists’ beliefs were socially important to them.

The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould (1981)

Gould believed this bias was rampant in particular scholarly fields, and the most prominent target for his criticism in The Mismeasure of Man was the study of intelligence, especially IQ testing and the genetics of mental ability. And his analysis was not kind. Gould believed that there was a direct connection between the discredited study of skull measurements and the dawn of intelligence testing in the following generation. “But the IQ…relies upon assumptions…as unsupportable as those underpinning the old hierarchies of skull sizes proposed by nineteenth-century participants.” (Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, p. 210)

It may be surprising to readers to learn that I—a psychologist who researches human intelligence—agree with Gould’s principal thesis. Scientists’ pre-conceived notions about the things they study do guide their data collection and analysis. These beliefs guide scientists in choosing variables to measure, theories to test, statistical methods to employ, and more. This connection between beliefs and methods is a strong one. After all, if you believe that the universe is made of cheese, you’re going to build a cosmic cheese whiz detector.

And though I wish Gould had not targeted my field, The Mismeasure of Man provides a great deal of evidence that scientists’ pre-existing beliefs color their judgment—but not in the way he intended. Rather, the book is a perfect example of the sin it purports to expose in others. Gould’s Marxist political beliefs made him attack intelligence research because he saw it as a threat to his egalitarian social goals. Ironically, it was this allegiance to ideology over data that made Gould himself a classic examplar of a biased scientist.

Gould’s Politics

Gould openly admitted that he had strong social beliefs that colored his scientific views. In the introductory pages of the revised version of The Mismeasure of Man, Gould recounted his laudable efforts to fight discrimination and segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, both in the U.S. and the U.K. He explicitly made the connection between his political and social beliefs and his subject matter:

My original reasons for writing The Mismeasure of Man mixed the personal with the professional. I confess, first of all, to strong feelings on this particular issue. I grew up in a family with a tradition of participation in campaigns for social justice, and I was active, as a student, in the civil rights movement at a time of great excitement and success in the early 1960s. (p. 36)

He also admits that these beliefs are deep-seated and an emotionally important part of his life:

My father became a leftist, along with so many other idealists, during upheavals of the depression, the Spanish Civil War, and the growth of nazism and fascism. He remained politically active . . . and politically committed. I shall always be gratified to the point of tears that, although he never saw The Mismeasure of Man in final form, he lived just long enough to read the galley proofs and know . . . that his scholar son had not forgotten his roots. (p. 39)

Gould’s Trap for Himself

If Gould’s thesis is true for all scientists, and he sometimes wrote as if it is, then there is an obvious problem for him: he would be subject to the same biases, and his conclusions, like those of the scholars targeted in The Mismeasure of Man, would be inherently flawed—including his claim that all scientific analysis is biased. To prevent his thesis undermining itself, Gould performed an intellectual sleight of hand and redefined a critical idea. “Objectivity must be operationally defined as fair treatment of data, not absence of preference,” he wrote. (p. 36) In this way, Gould used one of the rhetorical strategies of postmodernists: to redefine terms so that they do not have their everyday meaning, but rather a preferred meaning so that they do not threaten the person’s cherished conclusion.

By redefining “objectivity” so that he was allowed to still have preferences and biases while maintaining the patina of scientific respectability, Gould attempted to inoculate himself against the inherently contradictory position that he was in. This rhetorical strategy allowed him to separate preference from objectivity and claim that—somehow—he was capable of analyzing data “objectively” without undermining his conclusions. Gould was very much like the Marxist or postmodernist who believes that invisible power structures control every aspect of life—but who must somehow show that the postmodernist is special in her ability to escape the influence of these structures just long enough to see and resist them, thanks to their extraordinary intellectual courage and perspicacity.

In reality, Gould’s pious protestations of objectivity disguised a deceptive analysis of the scholarly record regarding intelligence research. What is astounding is how many people overlooked the contradictions of Gould’s position and accepted the analysis of intelligence research provided by a politically motivated snail expert.

Mismeasure’s Critics

Many scholars have criticized The Mismeasure of Man periodically throughout its 38-year history. For example, James T. Sanders stated that Gould’s attempt to link his argument to anti-racism was a ploy to smear intelligence scholars and Gould’s enemies as evil people. Arthur Jensen argued in 1982 that Gould misrepresented Jensen’s ideas and often demolished strawmen that no intelligence scholar believes, including the boogeyman of “biological determinism.” John Carroll showed that Gould understood neither the purpose nor interpretation of factor analysis (a statistical procedure often used to evaluate data from psychological tests) and that Gould’s attacks on factor analysis do nothing to alter the importance of intelligence tests, nor the mass of evidence—impossible to dispute—that they predict real-life outcomes.

Most criticism of The Mismeasure of Man was confined to the recherché world of psychologists who study intelligence. However, a new debate opened up in 2011 when a team of anthropologists argued that Gould’s analysis of the data on cranium measurements from 19th century scientist Samuel George Morton was flawed. Gould cast Morton as a racist who fudged his data to match his beliefs about white racial superiority because of a supposed larger skull capacity. Instead, the anthropologists argued, it was Gould who manipulated the data to support his biases.

This ignited a series of follow-up articles in the scholarly literature by authors taking a variety of positions regarding Morton’s data and Gould’s interpretations. Weisberg believed that the re-analysis was flawed, and Gould was mostly correct. Kaplan and his colleagues claimed that Morton’s interpretations were flawed, but that Gould was incorrect in believing that he could discern Morton’s actions and motivations. Finally, Mitchell believed that Morton’s data were accurate and that the interpretations were colored by the racism of the era, but the claim that Morton subtly manipulated the data was a fiction created by Gould.

Though still unresolved, the debate shows that a critical analysis of specific sections of The Mismeasure of Man is warranted. After writing an article about Lewis Terman, an important developer of early intelligence tests, I decided that a 23-page section of The Mismeasure of Man would be a valuable section of the book to analyze. This section is Gould’s description and analysis of the Army Beta test, one of the tests that Terman helped create. The Army Beta was used in World War I to screen illiterate recruits for military service.

Having read some of the primary scholarly work about the Army Beta, I knew that some of Gould’s claims were inaccurate. However, I was unprepared for the level of pervasive deception that I encountered when I carefully checked Gould’s claims against the historical record. Moreover, I discovered overwhelming evidence that any pretense of Gould being “objective”—even if defined as “fair treatment of data”—is a farce. In The Mismeasure of Man, Gould elevates his biases to the status of uncontestable facts and to great lengths to hide the truth from his readers.

Army Beta examinees during World War I. The other three images are of examiners giving instructions and demonstrating how to complete the test. Source: Yerkes, 1921.

A Case Study in Gouldian Deception

The distortions of the scholarly record regarding the Army Beta range from the relatively benign to deliberate falsehoods. It would be impractical to catalog them all here, so I encourage interested readers to read my full analysis. What makes the analysis important is not the Army Beta itself—the test has not been used in research or practice for decades. Rather, Gould’s discussion of the Army Beta is emblematic of the way he distorted evidence, ignored data that contradicted his opinions, drew unwarranted conclusions, and even lied to his readers.

One of Gould’s favorite techniques for misleading his readers was exaggerating the importance of any unfavorable information about intelligence testing. For example, Gould emphasizes that testing conditions were sometimes far from ideal. Compared to the orderly testing programs that 21st century students experience, the administration of the Army Beta (and its companion test for literate men, the Army Alpha) was disorganized and unsatisfactory. The army testing program was underfunded, and the speed at which it started meant that available facilities were often not large enough to accommodate all examinees. Additionally, there was often a shortage of qualified examining officers. None of this is in dispute.

Gould seized on this information to portray the conditions as “…something of a shambles, if not a disgrace” (p. 231) and claimed they invalidated the test results for many men. Gould’s supporting evidence is a single quote from “the chief tester at one camp” in which the officer complained that testing rooms were too overcrowded for some men to hear and understand the instructions. However, Gould cherry picked this quote (which was not from the chief tester at all) and ignored 13 favorable comments from officers at the same camp and the unanimously favorable opinions of the commanding officers at every camp.

The technique of building a negative conclusion on the basis of the slightest unfavorable data is epitomized in Gould’s analysis of the Army Beta instructions, which he called “Draconian” and “diabolical.” He also wrote that “…most of the men must have ended up either utterly confused or scared shitless.” (p. 235) However, his support for this claim is a single secondary source that states some men struggled with producing written responses to the test questions. For Gould, “struggling” is the same as being “scared shitless.”

Gould consistently ignored evidence that contradicted his claim that early intelligence test creators gathered meaningless data using garbage tests. He neglected to mention that the test’s creators explicitly permitted administrators to give instructions and commands in foreign languages because this would threaten his belief that the Army Beta was particularly unfair to immigrants. (Italian and Russian, which were the two most common languages for immigrants in the U.S. at the time, were specifically mentioned by the test’s authors as being acceptable.) Gould also did not tell his readers about the strong evidence that Army Beta test scores predicted military job performance, a topic of several chapters in the only primary source that Gould consulted.

Gould also outright lied in several passages in The Mismeasure of Man. Among the falsehoods were:

• The army test creators had a “…poor opinion of what Beta recruits might understand by virtue of their stupidity.” (p. 236)
• The claim that “vast numbers of men” earned zero scores on the Army Beta. (p. 247)
• His statement that extremely low-scoring men had their scores “adjusted” so that they would receive a negative number for a score and that these men were “too stupid to do any items,” and were “dullards.” (p. 246)
• It was “ludicrous to believe that [the Army] Beta measured any internal state deserving the label intelligence.” (p. 240)

None of these statements is supported by the historical record. Indeed, in every case there is strong evidence to indicate the opposite is true.

Gould’s analysis of the Army Beta is not central to his book’s thesis, and if it were removed from future editions his main arguments would stand. But the tactics he used to impugn the creators of the Army Beta are used in every chapter to malign intelligence research. Throughout the book, Gould showed no compunction about exaggerating facts that support his beliefs, omitting important contradicting information, and lying to his readers.

All this shows that, far from a “fair treatment of data,” Gould’s analysis was guided entirely by his preconceived notions about intelligence research, which he saw as socially dangerous and irredeemably flawed. Inadvertently, Gould proved his own thesis correct: sometimes scientists are guided more by their beliefs than any data.

It is likely that Gould thought that his “rhetorical strategies,” if I can call them that (which have been outlined in more detail elsewhere), were justified because of his high-minded politics. In this way, he was not unlike the pious religious fanatic who believes that inventing stories of miracles is acceptable if it strengthens the faith of others and adds more believers to the flock. Instead of “lying for God,” though, Gould was lying for social justice.

For those who share Gould’s political and social views, there are better strategies for promoting an egalitarian agenda than linking it to dubious claims about scientific research. For example, people who worry that the new field of genomics could revive eugenics and fear for its impact on the most vulnerable members of our society could work to strengthen human rights legislation and ensure that any genetic advances are available to all segments of society, not just the wealthy. People who worry about the links between intelligence markers, such as IQ test scores, and life outcomes could support policies and technology that make society more accommodating for people with lower intelligence. For instance, state bureaucracies could make it simpler for people to navigate the red tape if they want to claim benefits or get access to affordable housing.

One final note: though I see Gould as the ultimate example of bias in the history of intelligence research, I am not exempt from my own biases. This is why in my article about Gould’s discussion of the Army Beta in The Mismeasure of Man my coauthors and I are completely transparent. We invite readers to check our interpretation of the primary sources (heavily referenced throughout the article) we relied upon to research the Army Beta. We also administered the test to a modern sample to examine whether it functioned like other intelligence tests, and we pre-registered our hypotheses and expectations and uploaded our data to a public repository. We believe that minimizing bias is best accomplished through transparency in data collection and analysis, rather than spurious claims of “objectivity” or intellectual courage.

Russell T. Warne is an associate professor of psychology at Utah Valley University. He conducts research on advanced academic programs, human intelligence, and methodology. Follow him at @russwarne.

FILED UNDER: Top Stories

TAGGED WITH: Intelligence Research, Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould

https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/the-mismeasurements-of-stephen-jay-gould/

The Mismeasurements of Stephen Jay Gould.docx

‘Mask Burning Parties’ are Triggering the Left (Wing Fascists)

And It Is a Glorious Sight to Behold

March 6, 2021

by Kyle Becker

Normal Americans are over the masks. They are over the lockdowns. They are over the media hysteria.

Who is not “over” all of that is the radical left (wing fascists), which desperately wants Americans to remain paralyzed with fear and completely under the ‘lock down’ control of the Democratic Party.

A New York (Lying) Times reporter has brought attention to a ‘mask burning party” on the Idaho Capitol steps.

The reaction of the left to these videos is either downright ghoulish or steeped in derision.

“Darwinism in action,” one user tweeted. “A lot of these people are the same people who will refuse the vaccine. Their population/communities will be culled over time due to this rejection of science. I don’t say this with malice. It’s just a fact. I feel for the innocent children.”

“This is some sick stuff right here,” another said. “Guess what else has gone down since people have been wearing masks? Flu, colds, respiratory infections. I hope one day these kids will be embarrassed by this and completely own their parents for their ignorance.”

“What the hell does the rest of the world think when they see things like this?” another added. “We look like a bunch of ignorant hicks jfc.”

“When the next virus comes, and make no mistake, there WILL be another one, and it has a higher mortality than Covid, these people will make certain that as many people as possible die from it,” another commented. “Even if the bodies start to rot in the streets. They will not give a single f***.”

“These parents should be arrested,” David Badass of the New Civil Rights Privileges Movement added.

“The scope of what they are teaching their children includes being anti-science, being selfish, not caring about human life, it’s ok to break the law, and your ‘freedom’ takes priority over other people’s right to live.”

Conservatives, however, welcomed the sight of people taking off their masks and throwing them on the ash heap of history:

Let’s also briefly talk about the “science,” a subject that radical leftists are grossly uninterested in, much less than their vapid moral preening.

The science is not “settled” that masks even work to prevent the spread among the general public. There is no strong evidence that such masks or lockdowns even slow the spread, in terms of cross-national or state-level data.

The viral pandemic exploded in America’s blue states, regardless of mask mandates, while red states that did not have mask mandates compare very favorably. The top four states in deaths per capita were blue states with strong lockdown policies and mask mandates.

Image credit: Worldometers

Now, we are seeing a massive drop off in infection rates, mortality and hospitalizations, after peaking just after Biden’s election certification.

… left (wing fascism) can freak out all it wants that it is losing control over people’s daily lives as the coronavirus pandemic recedes. If you want to show that you are truly free, organize a mask burning party in your own community and upload the video to Twitter.

https://beckernews.com/mask-burning-parties-are-triggering-the-left-and-it-is-a-glorious-sight-to-behold-37519/

Mask Burning Parties are Triggering the Left-Wiing Fascists.docx

Book Review: "Disintegration" by Andrei Martyanov

Indicators of the Coming American Collapse

THE SAKER • MARCH 1, 2021

• 2,100 WORDS • 11 COMMENTS • REPLY

This is the third book by Andrei Martyanov that I am reviewing, the first one was “Book Review – Losing Military Supremacy: the Myopia of American Strategic Planning by Andrei Martyanov”, while the second one was “Book Review: Andrei Martyanov’s The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs”. I also interviewed Andrei about this second volume here. The book I am reviewing today, “Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse” can be pre-ordered from Clarity Press here and from Amazon here.

If the first two volumes mostly focused on issues of force planning and military power, this third volume addresses the wider context and shows example after example that the United States is not only failing at its attempts to remain a world hegemon, but the US is, in fact, in a process we could call “full-spectrum collapse” or, like Martyanov, simply “disintegration”. Specifically, the book looks into the manifestation of disintegration in the following spheres:

1. Consumption

2. Affluenza

3. Geoeconomics

4. Energy

5. Making Things

6. Western Elites

7. Losing the Arms Race

8. Empire Über Alles – Including Americans

9. To Be or Not To Be

10. Conclusion: Not Exceptional, Not Free, Not Prosperous – Not America?

These are tantalizing subject headings which I will not further describe because I really want to really encourage as many people as possible to read this book. Why?

Mainly because while Martyanov’s first two books were dealing primarily with military and geostrategic issues, this one goes much wider and looks at the wider socio-cultural reasons which create the context for such a dramatic lack of real military capabilities.

A month ago I wrote an article I called “Zone B Exists, Thus There Is Hope, I Promise You!” in which I tried to show that the pseudo “reality” in which most people in the West are artificially kept in by the most effective (and insidious) propaganda machine in history is not the “real reality” at all! Not only that, but that most of the planet has been living in “Zone B” for quite a while. In fact, this “Zone B” has already moved on, even if the legacy ziomedia never reports about this.

Well, you can think of Martyanov’s books like the perfect example of a “Zone B book”: not only does Martyanov debunk most of the myths of the US propaganda machine, he contrasts these delusions with examples from the real world.

You could buy only one or two of Martyanov’s books, and each of them stands on its own, but I really think of them as a trilogy which should be read and discussed by as many people in the West as possible. In fact, you could think of them as each a kind of “crash course on debunking delusions and returning to reality”. The overarching message of all three volumes is this: “People of the United States, your ruling elites are lying to you just like the chamber orchestra on the Titanic that was playing music while the supposedly “unsinkable” Titanic was sinking!”.

Interestingly, Martyanov adds that, of all nations, Russians understand these processes better than anybody else because they too suffered the same fate during the “democratic nightmare of the 1990s” (I would add that descendants of White Russians like myself also remember the “democratic nightmare” under Kerenskii in 1917). Martyanov writes:

“The collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic catastrophe which followed taught Russians a lot, and also left an aftertaste of the humiliation of losing power – a process the United States is going through right now”

Truth be told, Martyanov is hardly the first person to have mentioned the uncanny similarities between the Soviet Union of the late 80s, or the Russia of the 90s, with the US of the last two decades (or more). For example, Martyanov mentions Dmitry Orlov whose many books have looked into what he calls the “stages of collapse” (financial, economic, political, social, cultural and, later, he added ecological) and have become a precious analytical tool for many researchers. Many decades earlier, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whom Martyanov intensely dislikes, also often mentioned that the West of the 80s reminded him of the Russia of the early 20th century. This is just to illustrate Martyanov’s point that,

“Speaking in layman’s terms, the Russians get it. They, unlike any other people in the world, can relate to what the United States is going through right now. Russians can read the signs extremely well, while the U.S. elite not only has no experience with it, but is completely insulated from understanding it. This is America’s tragedy unfolding before our very eyes. Not only is America’s crisis systemic, but its elites are uncultured, badly educated and mesmerized by decades of their own propaganda, which in the end, they accept as a reality”.

I couldn’t agree more. I would also add that those Russians who write books and articles desperately trying to warn the people of the US of real catastrophe taking place do that not because they are hostile to the United States, but precisely because they are sympathetic to the people of the US. The flag-waving pseudo-patriots who accuse these Russians of being “anti-American” simply don’t understand the “evil Russians” they hate so much (mostly because modern Russia under Putin has been fantastically successful, in spite of sanctions, threats, subversion, etc., while the US is in agony – that is why these folks are willing to believe anything bad, no matter how self-evidently stupid, about Russia and/or Putin).

Yes, of course, Russians hate and despise the US ruling Nomenklatura, just as they despised their own, Soviet, Nomenklatura. But that in no way implies what many mistake for “anti-American” hostility.

In my almost 58 years of life I have been blessed with the chance to travel a lot and speak six or so languages, yet I have never come across what I would call “anti-Americanism”. Even in countries supposedly hostile to the US the actual focus of the anger and disgust of people are the actions of the AngloZionist Empire, the ugly parasite feeding off its US host. Take a country like, say, Brazil. Anti “yankee” feelings have always been strong there, yet Brazilian musicians are known to beautifully fuse US and Brazilian music (see this superb example). The same is true elsewhere: people hate US policies, but very rarely the people of the US. Right now, judging by the Runet and emails from friends, Russians mostly feel pity for the people of the US, not hate, and this is so because they “get it” as Martyanov correctly states. Of course, there are stupid and/or bigoted people in all countries and I am sure that there are those who hate the United States as a country, but I am confident that this is a small minority. There is one interesting category left: those who become critical of the US society after having lived in the US; a famous example of that would be Sayyid Qutb.

None of that is meant to whitewash all the violence and ugliness of the short but extremely violent US history. But violence and ugliness exist in the history of probably every country on the planet (there sure was plenty of violence and ugliness in the history of Russia!). True, the US was probably one of the most bloody and violent regimes in history, but that violence ought to be attributed to imperialism and capitalism and not to something unique to the US (the British Empire was possibly the most criminally violent in history). Even more important to the understanding of US history is that most of its violence had its roots not in national or racial causes, but in the many social or, better, class struggles which peppered the history of the US. Again, discussions of class issues have been comprehensively blotted out from all the school books in Zone A, depriving those who had the misfortune to be educated in the West from one of the most important tools of political and economic analysis.

The importance of the above cannot be overstated and this is why Martyanov comes back to the topic of the education of the western ruling classes over and over again. In the last pages of Disintegration Martyanov writes:

Thus, no viable ideas or solutions to the current unfolding economic, social and cultural catastrophe can originate within these elites, who see the world only through the Wall Street and New York Times lenses. Real intellect, courage and integrity are simply not there: they all have been traded for the perks and sinecures of what many correctly describe as the Washington D.C. blob, whose only purpose for existence is self-perpetuation.

I would only add that there is a karmic irony in the fact that it is precisely because these ruling classes have no other purpose in life than self-perpetuation (and consumption, I would add) that they are driving themselves, and the country which they exploit, into extinction.

Conclusion: these are “must read” books for all of Zone A! (and even Zone B!)

Finally, it is precisely because Martyanov’s books are like “messages from Zone B” that I urge every person living in the US or in the EU to read them. As I said, each of these books stands on its own, but together they reach a kind of intellectual critical mass which makes them truly “must read” books, especially for those who hate their ruling regime but love their country.

These books are all pretty short, very well written, they have decent (but not perfect) indexes and are an easy read. If you want to get a superb summation of what is really going on in the United States (as opposed to the frankly laughable AngloZionist propaganda or the inchoate and outright childish slogans of the flag-waving “Trump patriots”) – read these books. If you have brainwashed friends, give them any (or, better, all of) these books: they are like a “crash course in reality studies”. If you have family members who still believe all the nonsense about “American exceptionalism”, challenge them to read these books.

Folks living in Zone B would also immensely benefit from reading Martyanov’s books. Not because these books will tell them much they weren’t already at least vaguely aware of, but because these books are also a very truthful “state of the United States” kind of SITREP. In my experience, while most folks (at least the well-read ones) in Zone B do mostly understand that the Empire is dead (or very close to death) and while they also feel the US are undergoing a massive internal catastrophe, most of these folks in Zone B do not fully appreciate the magnitude and severity of these crises. For them too Martyanov’s books will be an eye opener. This is also why I hope that all three of Martyanov’s books will be quickly translated into Russian: they will become instant blockbusters and, what is even more important, they will be read in Russian academies and universities. French and Spanish are another two languages I hope that these books will be translated into.

But, most of all, I hope (against any common sense or logic) that these books will be read by truly patriotic US officers, force planners, analysts, political decision-makers, etc. Right now, there is a real threat of these folks stumbling into a shooting war with Russia which the US will never survive (nor would Russia or much of the rest of the world, of course). But even if by some miracle this potential war remains non-nuclear, the US will still be destroyed, at least as a functioning country, by Russian conventional capabilities. This is the single biggest danger and possible disaster authors like Martyanov are so desperately trying to prevent: a major war caused by a clueless ruling Nomenklatura involving a country (the US) which has never fought a defensive war in its history and which has never experienced real warfare, especially not against a competent adversary. I can only add that in case of a conventional war, Russia now has the means to defend not only her airspace, but a conceptual “Russian border proximity zone” of roughly 800km-1000km (and this range is steadily increasing). The US cannot. Neither can the EU or NATO. And for all the silly MIC+Pentagon promises of super-duper missiles, this is not something which will change in the short to medium time frame.

The more people in the US realize this, the better the chances avoid a terrible catastrophe. Hence the timely importance of Andrei Martyanov’s books.

https://www.unz.com/tsaker/book-review-disintegration-by-andrei-martyanov/

Disintegration by Andrei Martyanov.docx

Monday, 1 March 2021

Happy Birthday Birdemic: One year into the global totalitarian coup…

It was a year ago that I noticed that the global totalitarian coup had-happened; with the excuse of the Birdemic – but clearly never caused by it.

I had been expecting something of the kind for a few months; but I had supposed the fake-rationale would be some ‘climate emergency’ rather than a supposed-germ.

So… It was a bit more than a year ago that we in the UK began a three-week ‘lockdown’ – just to ‘flatten the curve’ and spread the load of cases…

Yet, of course (because this was a coup, not a disease); restrictions/ compulsions on life have never been removed and are still increasing – and this will continue.

And, of course, a year down the line; still, almost nobody has noticed the coup.

Everything has changed; yet, for the mass majority of the population; nothing has been learned.

One can perceive this indestructible obliviousness in all kinds of human interaction. And if people have not noticed yet, they never will notice.

The World is willingly, indeed aggressively, participating in a system of unconstrained lies and delusions, with no understanding and no end in sight (except, sooner or later, collapse and mega-death).

These are the plain facts of our situation: now, as then.

Therefore, there is no point is talking about "what can be done", practically, to reverse or even ameliorate the situation – because the magnitude of scale and profound depth of the global situation itself is utterly invisible and denied.

(Including by nearly-all of those who affect to address ‘the crisis’, when they are merely quibbling about sub-micro-issues.)

What has happened in the past year dwarfs in scope anything that has happened in human history: thus our main difficulty is in sheerly acknowledging and comprehending it.

Happy Birthday Birdemic.

https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2021/03/happy-birthday-birdemic-one-year-into.html

One year into the global totalitarian coup.docx