An Adverse Effect?

We don’t know it was the vaxx… but I suspect there may be a connection between the murder of a CEO and the imposition of the vaxx by the medical community on tens of millions of insufficiently skeptical Americans.

The CEO of America’s largest health insurance company was shot and killed by a masked attacker outside Manhattan’s Hilton Hotel on Wednesday morning. UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 50, was gunned down around 6:45am in Midtown, hours before New Yorkers gather in the neighborhood for the annual Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center.

Thompson was fatally shot in the chest in a targeted attack by a masked man, who then fled down 6th Avenue on a bicycle. The NYPD has launched a huge manhunt to catch the killer, who is believed to have escaped into Central Park.

Witnesses said the suspected gunman was seen waiting outside the hotel before the shooting, and knew which door Thompson was going to emerge from before shooting him at point-blank range. The CEO was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition, and was later pronounced dead.

There are any number of reasons that someone might have it in for a Fortune 500 CEO, but the health care angle does tend to point to an unfortunate medical outcome on the part of someone related to the killer.

Paging Chuck Dixon…

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The Inevitable Pardon

It never occurred to me that one of the Joe Bidens wouldn’t pardon Hunter Biden for his many federal crimes. The only thing that surprised me about it was the timing; I expected it to be issued at the last possible moment, as most controversial pardons are. But according to Jack Posobiec and CDAN, Hunter may have driven the time frame as well as its extension back to 2014, years before the crimes for which he was already accused.

The son gave the father no choice in this legal issuance . The son was about to sign a book deal and told the father he was not going to censor himself. It isn’t just what the son was charged with now, the wording of the father’s legal issuance goes back 10 years which covers dirty dealings in another country that involved the father. As far as the gross personal stuff goes, one can feel sorry for the son when you consider what the father did to him and another sibling when they were young.

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Martial Law in South Korea

The global supply of K-Pop may be in jeopardy now that President Yoon has declared emergency martial law in South Korea:

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol sensationally declared emergency martial law today, accusing his political opposition of subverting parliament and railing against ‘pro-North Korea, anti-state forces’ in his country. The shocking late-night address triggered chaos on the streets in Seoul where hordes of angry citizens clashed with riot cops and security forces outside the National Assembly.

South Korea’s military proclaimed that under martial law, parliament and other political gatherings that could cause ‘social confusion’ would be suspended and anyone found to violate the regulations could be arrested without a warrant.

In his address Yoon vowed ‘to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces plundering the happiness of our people and to protect the constitutional order. With no regard for the livelihoods of the people, the opposition party has paralysed governance solely for the sake of impeachments, special investigations, and shielding their leader from justice… Through this martial law, I will rebuild and protect the free Republic of Korea, which is falling into the depths of national ruin,’ he said.

But the speech sparked an immediate outpouring of anger as disgruntled citizens marched on the capital’s parliament building.

Since taking office in 2022, Yoon had struggled to push his agendas against an opposition-controlled parliament, raising suspicions the sudden implementation of martial law was a political ploy to exercise greater power. His popularity has also declined as of late amid various scandals in his inner circle, with the opposition seeking to impeach cabinet members over failure to investigate Yoon’s wife on corruption and influence-peddling allegations.

I’m assuming that Yoon is a Clown World puppet, especially in light of how he is illegally ignoring the Parliament’s vote to override his declaration of martial law, but I don’t know enough about Korean politics to have any idea what’s going on there. That being said, it appears that North Korea is being used as a stalking horse to justify some sort of shenanigans in response to the recent election of President Trump.

The move comes as a complete shock in the Western-aligned Asian nation of more than 50 million which despite escalating tensions with its foe to the North is not fighting an active war and has not suffered attacks on its soil. 

Indeed…

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The Dragon Stirs

If the events in the Middle East cause China to begin intervening with its military on behalf of its friends and allies, that is seriously going to alter the geopolitical math in that region.

China is “deeply concerned” about developments in Syria, where jihadist militants launched a surprise offensive last week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Monday. As Damascus’ “friend,” Beijing is prepared to take steps to prevent a further deterioration of the situation, he said.  

The Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and allied militias launched a large-scale attack on government-controlled territory in northern Syria last Wednesday. The militants took over a number of towns and villages in the Aleppo, Idlib and Hama provinces.   

Syrian government forces, backed by Russian fighter jets, launched a counteroffensive on Thursday and successfully liberated several settlements over the weekend, reportedly eliminating hundreds of militants and thwarting their advance into central Syria. However, dozens of Syrian army service members were lost amid the heavy fighting, the Syrian General Command said in an earlier statement.  

“China is deeply concerned over the situation in northwestern Syria, and supports its effort to uphold national security and stability,” Lin told a press briefing on Monday. “As Syria’s friend, China is willing to make an active effort to avoid further deterioration of the situation in Syria,” the official said.   

China has the manpower to swamp every other military; the Red Army is an order of magnitude larger than anything currently in seen in the Ukrainian front, which is itself two orders of magnitude larger than the conflict in the Middle East.

We appear to be rapidly approaching hitherto-unimaginable levels of Fuck Around and Find Out.

UPDATE: Speaking of FAFO, China is also ready for the trade war too.

China announced Tuesday it is banning exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications, as a general principle, lashing back at U.S. limits on semiconductor-related exports… China is the biggest global source of gallium and germanium, which are produced in small amounts but are needed to make computer chips for mobile phones, cars and other products, as well as solar panels and military technology.

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The Official Covid-19 Story: Revised Edition

The full 527-page report can be downloaded here. One summary of it which I have not yet confirmed.

The Official Government Report finds:

  • COVID-19 Origins: The COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from a laboratory or research-related incident.
  • Misinformation: Public health officials and the Biden administration engaged in misinformation and disinformation campaigns to suppress the lab-leak theory and promote specific narratives.
  • Government Overreach: The Biden administration’s mask mandates and other restrictive measures exceeded its authority and were often not supported by scientific evidence.
  • School Closures: The decision to close schools during the pandemic was not supported by science and had severe adverse impacts on students’ academic performance, mental health, and physical health.
  • Vaccine Mandates: The government imposed vaccine mandates that were not supported by science, ignored natural immunity, and caused significant collateral damage.
  • Erosion of Public Trust: Actions by public health officials and the government led to a decline in public trust in institutions and a rise in misinformation and anti-science rhetoric.
  • Financial Mismanagement: The government’s pandemic relief programs were vulnerable to significant fraud, waste, and abuse due to insufficient oversight and outdated financial management systems.
  • WHO’s Failure: The World Health Organization (WHO) failed to uphold its mission, caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party, and did not hold China accountable for violating international health regulations.
  • Economic Impacts: The pandemic and the government’s response had severe economic impacts on individuals, communities, and businesses, including job losses, business closures, and supply chain disruptions.
  • Unintended Consequences: The government’s pandemic policies, including lockdowns and vaccine mandates, had severe unintended consequences that will likely have lasting effects on society.

Congratulations to all the purebloods. It’s official and the US government has admitted it: you were absolutely right to distrust the government, the media, the corporations, the medical community, and what they all tried to pass off as “the science”.

Of course, this is only the partial truth. There are more revelations to come.

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A Timely Reminder on Tariffs

This is a repeat of a 2018 post that is itself a rehash from a paragraph of my 2009 book entitled The Return of the Great Depression. And contra Martin Armstrong and everyone else who is pontificating about how Trump’s proposed tariffs would “destroy the global economy”, it’s just not true, at least not on the historical comparison to which most of them are appealing.

Every single talking head who makes any reference whatsoever to Smoot-Hawley is a poser and a fraud who knows nothing about economics or economic history. This is basically a variant of the “Um, Ricardo?” pseudo-rebuttal to an argument for tariffs or other forms of protectionism. It is proof that the speaker has heard about the subject, but doesn’t actually know the subject at all.

The point is so trivial that I dealt with it in a single paragraph in The Return of the Great Depression ten 16 years ago and haven’t seen the need to mention it again since until now.

For many years, it was supposed that the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 played a major role in the economic contraction of the Great Depression. As more economists are gradually coming to realize, this was unlikely to have been the case for several reasons. First, the 15.5 percent annual decline in exports from 1929 to 1933 was less precipitous than the pre-tariff 18.3 percent decline from 1920 to 1922. Second, because the amount of imports also fell, the net effect of the $328 million reduction in the balance of trade on the economy amounted to only 0.3 percent of 1929 GDP. Third, the balance of trade turned negative and by 1940 had increased to nearly ten times the size of the 1929 positive balance while the economy was growing.

There was nowhere nearly enough international trade taking place at the time to cause or account for the Great Depression. Whoever originally came up with that idea didn’t know what they were talking about and didn’t understand economics. And neither does anyone who still takes the ridiculous idea seriously.

The reason the Great Depression happened was the same reason that the financial crisis of 2008 happened. Everyone was overleveraged and the total amount of money being borrowed collapsed. That is why an average of 1,287 banks failed every year from 1930 to 1933. The historical credit collapse had vastly more impact on the economy than a smaller annual decline in exports than had been experienced seven years before as a result of the Fordney–McCumber tariff act.

The only way Trump’s proposed tariffs can “collapse the global economy” is if the resulting shift in purchasing preferences toward domestic producers results in the collapse of overleveraged corporations and banks that will no longer be able to service their debts in countries that have a trade surplus with the USA. But that’s going to happen anyhow. What 100-percent tariffs really mean is that global producers will have a serious incentive to produce goods in the USA instead of manufacturing them elsewhere and shipping them into the USA; it would definitely alter the relevant math on leather book production, just to give one example.

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Whiskey Dream (Wary Eyes)

A new song for UATV subscribers, one that’s well outside my preferred genres. This one is particularly interesting, I think, because I used AI to start the lyrics, then rewrote them from the basic structure and rhymes provided. There is one audio infelicity toward the end that I can’t fix at the moment, but I will address it when the relevant bug is sorted out. And yes, the last line of the chorus was indeed inspired by Yohami.

Give me a sign, give me just one glance
Tell me there might be a chance
Before you leave this place alone
Let’s make this whiskey dream our own

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Based Books are Inevitable

Hans Schantz considers how the decline of mainstream publishing is producing increasingly based independent books on Fandom Pulse:

Mainstream publishing, once the gatekeeper of culture and ideas, is teetering under the weight of its own inefficiencies, ideological rigidities, and disconnect from audience demand. As it falters, a new breed of independent based creators — unburdened by institutional constraints and in tune with their audiences — stands ready to shape the future of culture through a broad-based and decentralized funding and distribution ecosystem.

Hobbled by ideological conformity, bureaucratic inefficiency, and a disconnect from readers, mainstream publishing survives only on revenue from their backlist and from celebrity authors. Elle Griffin observes:

I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).

Based creators are poised to thrive in this challenging media ecosystem. Using alternate platforms, they bypass the gatekeepers, fund their projects, and pool their fanbases to enhance their reach and to connect with new fans and readers. They offer authentic entertainment and uplifting stories to readers tired of propaganda and cultural programming. They work in a decentralized fashion that bypasses gatekeepers and connects directly to fans and readers.

All of which is observably true. There’s more, so be sure to read the whole thing. It’s also worth pointing out that the holiday edition of the Based Book Sale is running through tomorrow, December 3rd.

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Suddenly in Serie A

A Fiorentina midfielder collapsed in the middle of the game against Inter yesterday. Medical experts, as you might expect, are totally mystified and baffled as to the cause:

Fiorentina midfielder Edoardo Bove is in a medically induced coma after collapsing on the field during his team’s Serie A match at home to Inter Milan on Sunday, with the game abandoned shortly afterward.

Bove’s teammates immediately called for medical help and both sets of players surrounded the 22-year-old while he was being treated before he was swiftly stretchered off to an ambulance near the pitch and taken to Careggi Hospital in Florence.

“Fiorentina and the Careggi University Hospital announce that the footballer Edoardo Bove … is currently under pharmacological sedation and hospitalized in intensive care,” Fiorentina said in a statement.

We don’t KNOW it’s the vaxx… Speaking of which, I’ll be sharing my theory on the true purpose behind the vaxx on a UATV-exclusive Darkstream tonight, which I suspect some of you will find interesting.

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