Monthly Archives: December 2020

Masking the truth

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Can this really be true? From No Governments Have Isolated COVID-19 Virus–What Does That Mean?:

Is Dr. Anthony Fauci Guilty of Negligent Homicide?, Oct. 27, 2020: “In 2009, Dr. Anthony Fauci co-authored a paper about the Spanish Flu Epidemic that rated it as the most devastating modern pandemic. It swept the entire planet in the wake of the First World War and caused millions of deaths.

“In studying this major and actual pandemic, what did Dr. Fauci and his colleagues find? They discovered that most of the victims of the Spanish Flu didn’t die from the Spanish Flu. They died from bacterial pneumonia. And the bacterial pneumonia was caused by…. wait for it, wait for it…. wearing masks.

“The intention then, as now, was to halt the spread of the disease by wearing masks, but what actually happened was that an “unobserved” pandemic of bacterial pneumonia was unwittingly created instead.”

October 6, 2020: Medical Doctor Warns that “Bacterial Pneumonias Are on the Rise” from Mask Wearing. Americans have believed for 110 years it was the Spanish flu that allegedly killed 20 million Americans when in fact, the majority died from wearing face masks all day long, as well as deplorable hygiene.

Might also add this for interest. From Good News! Flu Cases Disappear in US – Number of Positive Flu Tests at All-Time Low for Some Reason?

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Compare last year:

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There is some agenda afoot. If only we knew what is was.

UPDATED LINK: I hope this works better: No Governments Have Isolated COVID-19 Virus–What Does That Mean?. If true, incredible.

“Do Not Let the Boys Win”

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This was from the Triennial Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria which was exceptionally PC with this being even more exceptionally offensive. This is modern feminism in a single meme. And on the same day we had visited the exhibition, I happened to be reading a collection of essays by Sigmund Freud and this one in particular: Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work which had been published in 1916. And there I came upon this para (which interestingly is not available on the web so far as I can tell):

As we learn from psycho-analytic work, women regard themselves as wronged from infancy, as undeservedly cut short and set back; and the embitterment of so many daughters against their mothers derives, in the last analysis, from the reproach against her of having brought them into the world as women instead of as men. (Freud 1916: 162)

The passage was found in a discussion on why some forms of therapy can never bring about change because the subject is so filled with such deep set anger and resentment that nothing can persuade them to move on and get on with life. That was in 1916. What would he think today, you have to wonder.

This, by the way, was the book in which that passage was found. I could not find that passage anywhere on the net using google as the search engine.

Freud, Sigmund. 1916. “Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-analytic Work.” In Freud, Sigmund. 1963. Character and Culture: Psychoanalysis Applied to Anthropology, Mythology, Folklore, Literature, and Culture in General. With an Introduction by Philip Rieff. New York: Collier Books.

Virtuous victimhood

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This was an article of such sublime interest that I can hardly believe how well done it is: Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities. It’s about how a seriously good income can be made from playing the victim since there are so many people about who love to minister to the needs of these phoney victims. This is the abstract, but read it all. As a bonus, unlike almost every academic paper I have come across, this is brilliantly written and as clear in its arguments as I have ever seen.

We investigate the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue. In our first three studies, we show that the virtuous victim signal can facilitate nonreciprocal resource transfer from others to the signaler. Next, we develop and validate a victim signaling scale that we combine with an established measure of virtue signaling to operationalize the virtuous victim construct. We show that individuals with Dark Triad traits—Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy—more frequently signal virtuous victimhood, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables that are commonly associated with victimization in Western societies. In Study 5, we show that a specific dimension of Machiavellianism—amoral manipulation—and a form of narcissism that reflects a person’s belief in their superior prosociality predict more frequent virtuous victim signaling. Studies 3, 4, and 6 test our hypothesis that the frequency of emitting virtuous victim signal predicts a person’s willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors, such as lying to earn a bonus, intention to purchase counterfeit products and moral judgments of counterfeiters, and making exaggerated claims about being harmed in an organizational context.

Much of the paper is an attempt to test their proposition using various data sets. Not to everyone’s tastes, but interesting in itself. But this is the conclusion that comes at the end.

The obligation to alleviate others’ pain can be found in most of the world’s moral systems. It also appears to be built into the structure of the mind by evolution, as evidenced by the human tendency to feel distress at signs of suffering. It is therefore not surprising that many people are motivated to help perceived victims of misfortune or disadvantage. But the downside of this proclivity is that it can also lead people to be easily persuaded that all victim signals are accurate signals, particularly when they perceive the alleged victim as being a “good person.” When this occurs, well-meaning people might allocate their material and social resources to those who are neither victims nor virtuous, which necessarily diverts resources from those who are legitimately in need. Effective altruism requires the ability to differentiate between false and true victims. Credulous acceptance of all virtuous victim signals as genuine can also enable and reward fraudulent claims, particularly by those with antisocial personality traits. Our work raises this possibility and by doing so it advances our understanding of how the moral goals of those who seek to minimize human suffering can be most effectively pursued.

This is a pathology that is doing much to undermine our way of life since there is a sucker born every minute, and with population growth the way it is, we may be up to one a second. Our open borders policies have been the product of this wish to help others, but to allow wolves to come in at the door is seldom a policy that works into the longer term.

The legend of Daniel Andrews continues

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It is quite amazing the hagiography that surrounds these political nonentities who have happened to be premiers when the Chinese Flu arrived. Over-reaction to the maximum extent has worked for them all. The experience has cured me of any notion that elections are to determine the best for the community. Each and every voter asks themselves, what is good for me personally and then votes accordingly. And with the pandemic, they have asked themselves, am I personally still alive? And receiving the answer, yes, vote for the people who they believe allowed that to happen. Even if this Covid thing was very unlikely to kill them, they have been grateful nonetheless.

As for us folk here in DanAndrewStan, our gratitude knows no bounds, as boundless as the local ignorance of pretty well everything that matters to their own personal wellbeing. And in the spirit of goodwill towards all men (and women) and even toward Dan himself, let me bring the following two articles from The Age to your attention. First this: ‘Strong Dan’ and ‘feared Dan’: The two faces of Victoria’s Premier.

Premier one is strong and authoritative, with a seemingly invincible self-belief. His addresses to the state, day after day over weeks and months, exuded firm, even stubborn and unflappable, resolve and clarity. He carried most of the people with him, and this was despite the millstone of heading the most incompetent Australian administration in living memory around his neck…. Premier two is a hounded authoritarian running a one-man government, dubbed by some as Dictator Dan, with an ineffectual Parliament and the usual check on leaders in the Westminster system – the cabinet – sidelined. Living in a small bubble of his own creation, with dogged self-belief, seeming at times like a delusion of grandeur, he showed an obsessional fear of letting go, lest the whole world disintegrate.

Comes with this picture I have seen for myself quite a few times on trips into town.

Melbourne's deserted CBD during the lockdown.

Missing only are the trams which ran through the entire metropolitan area the whole time, usually empty but at least everyone was being paid their wage to maintain demand along with the entire Victorian public service most of whom had no actual functions to fulfil. Working from home must have been so exhausting.

The other article is this: State government road debacle leaves project stalled, contractors owed millions. This is Premier Two who will have bankrupted the state and still depends on Chinese Belt and Road sellout of the state to pay the bills. In the meantime:

Jean-Paul Cellier’s business, STA Traffic, did 12 months of paid work as a subcontractor for Civilink on Derrimut Road until early this year, when the money stopped amid a flurry of “promises and stalling tactics” by the company. STA claims it is owed about $300,000. “We’re used to waiting to get paid, that’s normal,” Mr Cellier said, “but not getting paid at all makes you very frustrated. The government is paying to get this project done and that money is going somewhere – ultimately, we’ve missed out.”

Ho Ho Ho. We have run out of money. And do not for a minute think it has ended here.

Despite the problems involving WBHO, the government has shortlisted it as a favoured builder for its separate upcoming $2.2 billion Suburban Roads Upgrade. In 2019, WBHO executive chairman Mr Nel admitted of the Western Roads project: “We didn’t realise that we would have to do a lot more work than we priced for.” In its financial reports, the company complains of “perpetual delays” and rising costs tied to changes in design scope and problems with utility providers, as well as a misinterpretation of technical requirements and subcontractor failures. WBHO is pursuing claims against its design consultant and utility providers.

Complete financial disasters at every turn. There is no Premier One but wait till everyone finds out.

One more example why classical economic theory is far superior to modern Keynesian macro

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Let me take you to the article by Ross Gittens today displaying his typically ignorant views on the economy. But if he is going to invoke Keynes to explain anything, let me remind you that no one who uses Keynesian economics to explain anything ever gets it right. Evil Lord Keynes flies to rescue of disbelieving Liberals. This is what Gittens wrote:

When we entered lockdown in March this year, many people (including me) pooh-poohed Scott Morrison’s assurance that the economy would “snap back” once the lockdown was lifted. Turned out he was more right than wrong.

We could, of course, compare what I wrote on March 26 on the AIER website: A Classical Economic Response to the Coronavirus Recession.

That is why when I hear discussions of the need for a stimulus I am even more than usually amazed at how beyond sense economic policy has become. What is needed, and what is largely being done, are measures to hold both capital and labour in place until the closures are brought to an end. There are businesses that will open the moment the law allows. There are millions of jobs that will be immediately filled again the moment these businesses reopen, which will see their customers flooding back. The aim of policy is therefore to maintain a holding operation on business and to ensure workers who are being temporarily displaced can purchase necessities.

Back in March, as Gittens himself emphasises, he had no idea that the economy might “snap back” once the lockdown was lifted, but that’s precisely because he is a Keynesian who has no idea how a market economy works.

BTW have I ever mentioned the book I published this year: Classical Economic Theory and the Modern Economy. It is unbelievable how ignorant of economics a modern economist is.

Whatever sort of new world we are in it cannot be described as brave

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Just been to the National Gallery and when I walked in I asked about masks and was told they were completely optional so off mine went. But of the other patrons of the arts down here in DanAndrewStan, 90% kept them on. Whether they did it to protect me from them, or to protect themselves from me I do not know. But that these same people are also terrorised by global warming seems a virtual certainty. The only question now is when will they start the distribution of soma. Perhaps they will mix it in with the vaccine.

Political crime and punishment

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Fyodor Dostoevsky: philosopher of freedom, the opening two paras:

On December 22, 1849, a group of political radicals were taken from their prison cells in Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress, where they had been interrogated for eight months. Led to the Semenovsky Square, they heard a sentence of death by firing squad. They were given long white peasant blouses and nightcaps—their funeral shrouds—and offered last rites. The first three prisoners were seized by the arms and tied to the stake. One prisoner refused a blindfold and stared defiantly into the guns trained on them. At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered as a courier galloped up with an imperial decree reducing death sentences to imprisonment in a Siberian prison camp followed by service as a private in the army. The last-minute rescue was in fact planned in advance as part of the punishment, an aspect of social life that Russians understand especially well.

Accounts affirm: of the young men who endured this terrible ordeal, one had his hair turn white; a second went mad and never recovered his sanity; a third, whose two-hundredth birthday we celebrate in 2021, went on to write Crime and Punishment.

I’m not sure I knew this, or if I did, I didn’t remember. I remember the story but not that it was Dostoevsky who had been about to be hanged. The article should be read in full, as anything by Gary Saul Morson should be read in full.