Mailvox: Vaxxmania in the military

As if the US military wasn’t facing enough challenges, now the generals want to kill off the soldiers before they even enter the battlespace with genetic mutations:

The Pfizer model is the one they want us to take. It’s what’s available at the on-station clinics which means personnel would have to go out of their way and risk personal expense to get any others.

The pressure to take the vax mostly emanates from the officers. I’ve noticed a contrast with Officers trusting this thing like it’s come down from God while NCO’s are far more skeptical. Regular soldiers even more so with the distrust. From my officer’s perspective, what they hit us in particular with is nonsense about setting the example. Rather a bastard misuse of telling junior officers to set the example. About being “the first off the helicopter” in Vietnam or “the first off the boat” at Normandy. Do I need to go at length about how absurd this is?

I read this as a worldview that’s exhausted. They’re referencing their sacred motifs and deeds to pressure people into taking a rushed production gene therapy whose long term health effects are conjecture. And that italicized portion of the text doesn’t even fully capture the awful picture of the Pfizer serum, as you and your regulars know I am sure.

Then of course there’s the hard incentives. Want to take your mask off in office meetings? Gotta take the vax. Want to avoid ‘quarantine’ when you arrive overseas (which just happens to be done at the same place they house prisoners)? Take the vax. I know people who appear intelligent who took it on that first basis of just wanting to not wear a mask. 

Next up is attitude. Don’t want to take the vax? The officers on board with this will let you know they think you’re not a team player and probably a tinfoil hatter. Right; me and the others who refuse to be tested-on are nuts. This is their perspective: Guarding the CIA’s poppy fields in Afghanistan for a whole year of one’s life is perfectly normal and a checked box on your resume, but refusing literal poison is suspicious silliness. I anticipate as the vax-refusal situation progresses the retribution will get serious. It’s only a question of severity.

All the pro-vax people I’ve spoken to about it think it’s a regular old vaccine and don’t understand why anyone would be skeptical of it. They think Corona Chan is a horseman of the apocalypse and if they get it then they will die. Barring that, they think it will kill old people and mutants with immune disorders if everybody doesn’t let a corporation with a criminal record play God with their genes. That last part is of course is out of my head, not theirs, as they don’t even know it will mess with their genetics. Which reminds me; who or whatever is producing propaganda directed at us is knowingly lying. One “TAKE THE VAX” pamphlet I glanced over had a bullet point to the effect that “some people think the Covid-19 vaccine will change their DNA.” Which is of course higher level attempt to deceive the reader, because while it’s true the serum won’t tamper with DNA, nobody ever alleged it does. It screws with your mRNA.

Fortunately, mRNA is just junk DNA that doesn’t serve any purpose, right? Trust the science. It’s totally settled.

Wednesday PM Arktoons

MIDNIGHT’S WAR Episode 5: The Reaper Calls

THE HAMMER OF FREEDOM Episode 6: Like Circling Vultures

By the way, I’m going on Alex Jones now to discuss Arktoons.

UPDATE: I’ll admit it, I blinked once or twice when I realized the first frame they were going to show was the long vertical double-panel of the dead vampire servant being hung upside-down to drain his blood. It’s not exactly the introduction to Arktoons I would generally recommend.

The larval ticket takers

If you want to know where the next batch of cuckservative talking heads can be found, they’re pupating in the swamp of the controlled fake opposition at Newsmax:

As the two fringe cable TV outlets battle for former President Donald Trump’s affections, several high-profile One America News staffers have jumped ship to Newsmax—not just in pursuit of a larger audience, insiders said, but also as a respite from OAN’s increasing extremism.

Already known for its cartoonishly bonkers MAGA propagandizing, OAN in recent months has veered even further into unhinged right-wing territory. And Newsmax—which is often just as obsequiously pro-Trump in its commentary—has pulled back on its wildest election conspiracy theories while hoovering up some of OAN’s top on-air talent: news anchor Alex Salvi, correspondent Jenn Pellegrino, and reporter Amanda Brilhante. Those moves followed Newsmax poaching OAN’s White House correspondent Emerald Robinson last year.

Pellegrino, who served as a White House correspondent and on-air host for OAN, abruptly left the far-right channel earlier this month, only for Newsmax to announce her debut as co-anchor of a 9 p.m. ET program called Cortes and Pellegrino, co-hosted by former Trump campaign senior adviser Steve Cortes.

In late March, meanwhile, Salvi—one of OAN’s rare “straight news” anchors—revealed during his media-focused show After Hours that he was exiting the network after hosting since 2019. A few weeks later, Salvi quietly showed up on Newsmax, revealing his new role as a Rome-based foreign correspondent with the network. Brilhante, who’d been with OAN since graduating college in 2017, was hired away in February to be Newsmax’s breaking news reporter.

Newsmax is literally the most bogus operation with which I have ever have had the misfortune of working. I have more respect and affection for both GT Interactive and Indiegogo, and we all know how those relationships turned out. Some longtime readers may recall the brief period when VP featured ads, which were small and wouldn’t have been distracting if they hadn’t so often mentioned CELEBRITY FEET! or other ridiculous topics that still puzzle me as to how they qualify as a variety of clickbait.

Anyhow, I was paid for the ads, and the contract specified a significant boost once the blog got to a certain level of traffic, which might have been one million monthly pageviews. Like I said, this was a while ago, probably 2014. Once I’d hit that target which they’d specified, I let them know, along with a screenshot proving that the target had been legitimately hit. Newsmax’s response? They immediately terminated the target and never paid the previous two months that they’d owed.

About 18 months later, they came back and tried to pitch me on working with them again. Let’s just say that I actually laughed before declining in no uncertain terms.

So, I’ve known they were shady for some time now. But as AC points out, in light of the CEO’s million-dollar donation to the Clinton Foundation and the way they are now throwing out tickets to those willing to take them, it’s pretty clear that they go well beyond shady.

Implied consent for vaccination

I’m as virulently opposed to the not-vaccines as anyone, and frankly believe those responsible for creating them, advocating for them, and mandating them should be found guilty of crimes against humanity, but it is wise to avoid mischaracterizing the actions of the other side if one’s criticisms are to remain credible. For example, I’ve read the WHO report entitled Considerations regarding consent in vaccinating children and adolescents between 6 and 17 years old, and it simply does not indicate that the WHO “now considers your child’s presence in school informed consent to vaccinate that child”.

This is what the report actually says:

1. A formal, written consent process is used, particularly in middle- and high-income countries that have a higher percentage of literate populations and a longer history of providing vaccination to older age groups. Vaccination of this target group may be delivered through school health services. Health authorities inform the parents about the vaccination and written consent from the parent is required to opt-in, i.e. give permission for the older child/adolescent to be vaccinated. Alternatively, a written form is used to allow parents to express non-consent (or refusal) to vaccination of their child. This is known as an opt-out procedure.

2. A verbal consent process, whereby consent is given verbally by the parent after being duly informed about the vaccination. However, this approach can only be used when parents accompany the child to the vaccination.

3. An implied consent  process by which parents are informed of imminent vaccination through social mobilization and communication, sometimes including letters directly addressed to the parents. Subsequently, the physical presence of the child or adolescent, with or without an accompanying parent at the vaccination session, is considered to imply consent. This practice is based on the opt-out principle and parents who do not consent to vaccination are expected implicitly to take steps to ensure that their child or adolescent does not participate in the vaccination session. This may include not letting the child or adolescent attend school on a vaccination day, if vaccine delivery occurs through schools…. 

A common concern is that consent procedures affect vaccine acceptance and coverage. When comparing data from countries using written consent and those using informal, verbal or implied consent processes, comparable levels for vaccination can be seen in both settings.This suggests that the association between the informed consent procedure that a country uses, and actual levels of immunization coverage, is not strong.

While every parent should be wary of the “implied consent” standard and be certain that it does not apply to one’s children’s schools, the key is the distinction between the opt-in and the opt-out standards. But in both cases, for the time being, parental authority is still being respected.

That being said, you had better learn your local laws and take action accordingly. It might already be time to leave Canada to the Chinese.

Dozens of children flocked to the playground of Gordon A. Brown Middle School on Wednesday afternoon, to eagerly await their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Most were accompanied by parents, or older siblings, as the East York school announced Wednesday morning it would launch a pop-up clinic that afternoon.

Many parents had already been vaccinated — they were there to provide support. What they weren’t there for was to give permission. In Toronto, those 12-15 don’t need a parent or guardian to allow them to take the vaccine. Health Canada approved the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 12 to 15 on May 5, making Canada the first country to do so, with the hopes that school restrictions could be eased in the fall.

Wednesday AM Arktoons

ALT★HERO Episode 5: I Will Break You, Scabby Donkey!

DEUS VULT Episode 5: Gorok Strikes

After consulting Arktoons subscribers on SocialGalactic and looking at the current level of subscription resources combined with crowdfunded content, here is the current plan:

  • Most of the most popular comics will stay the same, with long weekly episodes between 20 and 40 panels. This includes A Throne of Bones, Midnight’s War, Alt★Hero, Chuck Dixon’s Avalon, Quantum Mortis, Swan Knight’s Saga, and Ember War, among others.
  • Shade and AH:Q will drop to 8 panels for production reasons. In the case of the latter, we’re going to have to wait several months for Helix Haze to finish some work for one of the dinosaurs before he can illustrate Issues 5 and 6. We looked into replacing him with a different illustrator, but ultimately decided against doing so because we really like his work. The Awakener and Hammer of Freedom will be reduced to 8 panels as well.
  • The new series of Silenziosa will launch with 12 panels, as will one of the two new Brazilian series. The other will launch with 8 panels. The new independent series of Dead Bang will be presented as the publisher sees fit, but we’ll recommend 8-12 panels to them.
  • Six new series, including Something Big will launch with 4-6 panels that will vary from week to week. Subscribers will be given the opportunity to vote on at least two of the series, including who the next AH spinoff character should be. New short episodes of Chicago Typewriter will also be created.
  • As the subscriptions grow over time, we’ll intend to give subscribers the choice between a) making certain series longer and b) more new series. We are still planning the crowdfunding campaign for Midnight’s War, but not until we introduce at least one episode with the new approach to coloring it.
  • 1,000-word text episodes when the feature is ready. The first text series will be the unreleased two chapters of A Sea of Skulls that I promised a few weeks ago.
I understand that the vote for long episodes was unanimous. However, I also recognize that it is probably not an accident that a majority of the most-viewed and most-liked series on Webtoons and Tapas are of the “bite-sized” variety. So, we’re going to try providing excellent examples of both and see what happens; if I have learned one thing over the years, it is to let the market speak for itself and to abandon any plans that are contradicted by it no matter how flawlessly logical they are.
Also, the Arkhaven blog has been crushing it of late, with some very good analysis of the various developments on the cultural war front that is the film and comics industry. The Dark Herald’s article on the inevitable failure of The Fantastic Four is educational on multiple levels.

Sliding toward irrelevance

I’d take this with a grain of salt or two, but the poor metrics are legitimate and President Trump has no one to blame but himself for them.

Online talk about him has plunged to a five-year low. He’s banned or ignored on pretty much every major social media venue. In the last week, Trump’s website — including his new blog, fundraising page and online storefront ­— attracted fewer estimated visitors than the pet-adoption service Petfinder and the recipe site Delish.

Trump is still by far the Republican Party’s biggest star, and conservative lawmakers and provocateurs are now loudly sparring over the importance of loyalty to him ahead of the 2022 midterm elections or a potential second Trump presidential run. Many of the party’s potential 2024 candidates say they will not run if he does, and many of the party’s luminaries have traveled to Florida to meet with him.

But Trump’s continued influence isn’t translating into a bigger online audience, according to a Washington Post review of data from four online-analytics firms. Social engagement around Trump — a measure of likes, reactions, comments or shares on content about him across Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest — has nosedived 95 percent since January, to its lowest level since 2016.

I still don’t understand why President Trump didn’t, at the very least, join Gab and aggressively support alternative social media. But then, I don’t understand why every single conservative in the media would rather whine and cry incessantly about Wikipedia instead of utilizing Infogalactic.

I suspect the two are related, and have something to do with the endless search for approval on the part of those who are drawn to politics and media. But what it is exactly, I am very unqualified to say. 

Tuesday PM Arktoons

EMBER WAR Episode 4: Twenty-Eight Percent

CHUCK DIXON’S AVALON Episode 4: When You Get to Hell

Now that Arktooons has been in operation for nearly one month, we’ve learned a lot, and we’re ready to start applying some of those lessons. One is that more is not always more when it comes to episode lengths. It turns out that some of our more popular series, such as Hypergamouse and Ben Garrison, run short, and a surprisingly high percentage of the most popular series on Webtoons and Tapas run between 2 and 8 panels. 

Apparently, as with Twitter, there is a case to be made that less can sometimes be more. As far as I can tell, it appears to be that if readers really love a series, the longer the better, but if they merely like it, they actually prefer a shorter episode that allows them to take in the whole story without losing interest in it.

So, what we’ve decided to do is introduce some of the new content that we’re going to be launching in June in shorter episodes. The upside is that since the shorter episodes cost less per episode, we’re going to be introducing more new original series than we had planned, including a possible spinoff or two. This approach will not only permit us to produce brand new content from high-calibre illustrators who don’t have the time to commit to full books, but will also allow us to maximize the resources the subscribers are providing.

My question for Arktoons subscribers is this: there are a number of series that will remain in the long episode format, such as Alt-Hero, A Throne of Bones, Midnight’s War, Swan Knight’s Saga, and Quantum Mortis, among others. Would you prefer them to continue appearing as one long episode each week, or would you prefer to see them divided into three shorter episodes each week?

A death squad hunts down The Awakener

The Hulk learns who rules the Hellmouth

Truth 3: Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against millions of Palestinians. Discrimination against Palestinians and confiscation of their land, including in East Jerusalem, is one of the triggers of this latest round of violence. One should not ignore this context.

– Mark Ruffalo Retweeted, 19 May

“Equality, human rights, and prosperity for all from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” The fight for equality happening here in the USA should be the  guiding principle of our values in the Middle East and for our allies abroad.

– Mark Ruffalo, 20 May

Please watch @MehdiHasanShow special on the Middle East is the clarity we need in the fog or war. Why is this happening? How did we get here? What’s actually happened? Has it been fair? What about the children?  What can the USA do stop this ongoing conflict?

– Mark Ruffalo, 20 May

I have reflected & wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing “genocide”. It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful & is being used to justify antisemitism here & abroad. 

-Mark Ruffalo, 25 May

Now, it is perfectly clear that Israel is not committing genocide, for the obvious reason that it isn’t. The 400-percent growth of the Palestinian population since 1950 is more than sufficient to disprove the accusation. That being said, I strongly suspect that if Americans were to require the Jews resident in the United States to live in a pair of large ghettos under conditions similar to those that the Israelis force the Palestinians to live in Gaza and the West Bank, such an action would be described as genocide too.

So remember, as always, there is no information content in rhetoric. Rhetoric concerns emotional manipulation, not factual accuracy or logical consistency, which is why the slaves of Hell always attempt to reserve the more effective rhetorical weapons for themselves while simultaneously denying the use of the same terms to others even when they are perfectly apposite.

The irony is that Israel is literally a national socialist state, as Zionism is a historical revision of the global socialism of the neoclowns now resident in the United States. It’s not very different than the post-Lenin conflict between Stalin’s national communism and Trotsky’s world revolution. But only those whose minds are firmly established in the dialectic are capable of reading that simple factual statement without spiralling immediately into cognitive dissonance, because the rhetorical antithesis between “Nazi” and “Jew” has been so firmly established that most people can’t even get their heads around the historical fact that the world’s first national socialist party was established in China prior to the founding of the Chinese Communist Party and had nothing whatsoever to do with the scattered remnants of a minor Middle Eastern tribe.

In fact, as it happens, explicitly national socialist parties were established in both China and Britain prior to the 1919 founding of the German National Socialist Workers Party.

But those who are engaged in rhetorical wars are always aggressively uninterested in the actual facts of history.

UPDATE: On the other hand, Ruffalo’s genuflection only rates a 4/10 on the cringe scale in comparison with John Cena’s 7/10 public self-flagellation:

“I have to say something very, very, very important now. I love and respect China and Chinese people. I’m very, very sorry about my mistake. I apologise, I apologise, I’m very sorry. You must understand that I really love, really respect China and the Chinese people. My apologies. See you.”