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Brandon Smith: Leftists Use Mass Censorship Because They Don’t Have The Guts To Engage In Fair Debate

Brandon Smith: Leftists Use Mass Censorship Because They Don’t Have The Guts To Engage In Fair Debate

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Why is censorship the go-to tactic for leftists?

Well, if you ask them they won’t deny…

Published

on

Brandon Smith: Leftists Use Mass Censorship Because They Don't Have The Guts To Engage In Fair Debate

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Why is censorship the go-to tactic for leftists?

Well, if you ask them they won’t deny their love affair with the memory hole. In fact, most leftists will vehemently defend censorship as absolutely moral and for the “greater good.”

Their position is basically this: We live in a “society”, and some ideas, thoughts and words are “dangerous” and destructive to that society. Therefore, those ideas and words must be eliminated from open discussion so they can protect society from itself.

But who gets to decide which ideas are dangerous and destructive? It’s rather convenient that the political left has anointed themselves the pure and objective arbiters of our culture. Purity within leftist groups is measured by expressions of “empathy” (virtue signaling). They are the thought police because, somehow, they believe they are the most empathetic.

True empathy is of course impossible to measure in another human being. You could very well be dealing with a narcissist or psychopath that is very good at pretending they care and have a conscience. They might say all the right things and have all the right opinions in public, but in their private lives they are malicious and take pleasure in causing pain in others. Humans are utterly fallible, which is why all systems of freedom seek to decentralize power through checks and balances and avoid mass censorship. All systems that value freedom and peace seek to eliminate the existence of thought police.

Leftists (and globalists) have sought to circumvent checks and balances as well as free speech protections through a number of tactics. In much of the western world they pay lip service to free speech rights when it is convenient for them, but most European nations and countries like Australia have NO legitimate constitutional measures that restrict governments from easily initiating speech suppression laws whenever they want. The draconian restrictions put in place over covid have proven this beyond a doubt.

This is what makes the US so unique as a culture, and it is the reason why leftists have pursued other methods to silence dissent.

In America, the left has partnered with the corporate world and is attempting to use “business rights” as a means to attack and diminish conservative voices. That is to say, they think that if they can harass and pressure a business to deplatform their opposition then this is a technically legal tactic because a business has a right to associate or not associate with whoever they choose. If the power of government cannot be used to muzzle their opponents, then the power or corporations and Big Tech can be just as effective.

Of course, most Big Tech corporations are NOT private businesses. They rely heavily on government subsidies and tax incentives in order to survive. If Google had to pay for the massive amount of bandwidth that it has used in the past decade they would have gone out of business a while ago, but with federal government incentives Google is given an immense advantage over its competition. In terms of state subsidies companies like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook rake in billions.

That’s your tax dollars going into the pockets of the same corporations that claim they have the right to censor you for your political views. If they want to censor the public, then we should take away all the subsidies and the tax dollars; it’s that simple. We can let those companies implode without our money to support them.

We have seen Big Tech and social media companies silence tens of thousands of conservative’s over the past few years. The whole time these companies and the media have denied that they specifically target people on the political right (which these days means anyone to the right of full bore communism and globalism). This gaslighting has been debunked over and over again. It is undeniable that conservatives are far more likely to be blocked or banned from social media than people who express leftist views.

Once confronted with the data that proves Big Tech is biased in favor of the left, they switch gears to the same old circular argument: “Well, conservatives are banned more from social media because they are the people always posting dangerous and destructive ideas…” And we’re right back to where we started.

So let’s just establish some basic facts here before moving forward in order to avoid any misunderstandings about the left…

FACT 1: Leftists are rabidly pro-censorship. This is not up for debate. As the leftist New York Times argued in 2019, “free speech is killing us,” specifically in reference to conservative speech. They will say conservatives do the same thing and this is simply not true. We are not living in the America of the 1960’s when religious suppression of language was prominent; we are living in the America of the 2020’s where leftists have insinuated their own bizarre cult of Puritanism into US life and are viciously seeking to silence anyone that disagrees with them.

FACT 2: Leftist censorship almost always aligns with the policies and desires of establishment elites. It is a mistake to assume that corporations are being “bullied” by the left. On the contrary, corporate elites and globalist foundations are the people influencing leftist activists and molding social justice movements to serve establishment interests. Look into the background of any SJW movement and your will find hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and so on.

Leftists take their marching orders from the corporate elites. Why are leftists so aggressively pro-vax mandate, for example? Because the establishment media told them they must be – When Trump was in office and the media was anti-vax, leftists were mostly anti-vax. When Biden entered the White House the media became militantly pro-vax and so did the vast majority of leftists. They have no individual autonomy and no original thoughts; they are a hive mind waiting around for the establishment to tell them what to think.

FACT 3: Leftists believe the ends justify the means no matter the consequence, and they view contrary facts and evidence with disdain. You will almost never see a leftist argue on the basis of merit, logic or results. They will ALWAYS argue based on emotional justification, righteous indignation and the projection that anyone that disagrees with them MUST be a terrible or evil person that has malicious intent.

This is why their go-to attacks are consistently personal; they use accusations of bigotry, racism, sexism, etc. in order to avoid discussions on facts and evidence. Because if facts and evidence are being presented by a “literal Nazi” then all of those facts become null and void and the person can be ignored.

FACT 4: Leftists believe the mob is the law and all other laws and principles must be subservient to the dictates of the “majority.” Leftists are obsessed with majority rule and obsessed with manufacturing consent by manufacturing a false consensus. In other words, leftists believe that if they can trick or coerce 51% of the population to think the way they do, then they have won and all of their actions are sacrosanct by the virtue of the majority. They actually believe that the other 49% of the population must submit to their dictates because the majority is god.

In truth, the mob is almost always wrong and the “majority” has a tendency to be the lowest common denominator and the most ignorant within a society.

If they can’t obtain that precious 51% of the population, then they will try to pretend as if they are the majority anyway. They will use coordinated mob attacks on their opponents to make it appear as if millions of people are against them when the mob is actually only in the hundreds or thousands. Exposure of their true numbers is like Kryptonite to leftists and they would rather disband than admit being in a tiny minority. They will respond by claiming the group “never existed” and is a “figment of conservative paranoia.”

FACT #5: If leftists could rule at the barrel of a gun, they would. Leftists are absolutely in favor of imprisoning political opponents and anyone that speaks against them, and many of them openly applaud the idea of murdering conservatives because of their ideals. Just look at how they defended the Waukesha mass killing by a BLM activist as “karma” for the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. There is no such thing as a peaceful end game for the political left. The violent direction their ideology is traveling is obvious.

But what is all the subversion and chicanery meant to accomplish? Why not confront their opponents directly instead of using subterfuge? Because they are afraid. They are terrified of legitimate debate on fair ground based on reality instead of emotional fantasy. They will do anything to avoid direct confrontation because they know they will lose.

Their common tactics include subversion, bait and switch, ambushes, and always choosing the ground that a confrontation takes place so they can control the debate and shut down their opponents whenever they start losing. This does not mean that I think that every website and platform out there is supposed to exist with no rules and no restrictions; that’s impossible by the simple fact that trolls and saboteurs exist. But leftists don’t engage in case-by-case censorship, they rely on mass censorship and enormous corporate partners to strong arm people. They aren’t interested in an honest disagreement with a respectful platform user, they are interested in silencing everyone that disagree regardless.

I can’t help but once again use the example of the leftist Jihad against Joe Rogan to illustrate my point. The left hates Rogan because he allows both political sides to have a voice on his show, and his show is bigger than anything the leftists and the mainstream media can hope to achieve. Leftists believe that if they cannot control something, then they must destroy it. An open platform that treats conservatives and their views fairly cannot be allowed to exist, so Rogan becomes a top target of the political left.

Rogan is targeted over his position on the covid pandemic and the vaccine mandates, but these are merely vehicles that leftists think they can use to rationalize the mass censorship they wanted long before the pandemic was a thing. They believe that the argument that “millions of lives are at risk” supplants all other debate. That is to say, the more people that die from covid, the happier they are because those bodies can be used are fuel to push their ideological cult forward to greater power.

The interesting thing about covid, however, is that it turns out NOT to be a very effective vehicle for the leftists in terms of using bodies to buy control.

As we saw when Joe Rogan confronted CNNs top medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his show, the political left is easy to destroy when it comes to debate on the response to covid, and it is a prime example on why leftists usually avoid debate on fair ground. When Rogan contracted covid the leftists were practically dancing in the streets looking forward to his imminent death. These people are so stupid they don’t seem to realize that on average over 99.7% of ALL PEOPLE that contract covid will easily survive it.

I have now had the virus twice, about two years apart, and survived both times without any treatment and without vaccination. Rogan fared even better than I did, beating back covid in just a few days, most likely because he had access to Ivermectin. The leftists and the media went into a rage after Rogan’s easy recovery. Instead of admitting defeat and admitting that vaccines are not necessary when dealing with covid, they attacked Rogan’s method of treatment, accusing him of spreading medical misinformation and promoting “horse paste” (Ivermectin). To clarify, Rogan is living proof that easy treatment of covid is possible, and this made the left angry enough to spread lies about him and his treatments.

During his debate with Sanjay Gupta, Rogan annihilated CNN’s assertions on Ivermectin and treatment for covid in general. Remember, Gupta is CNN’s top medical correspondent, Rogan is not a doctor at all, yet, Rogan wiped the floor with Gupta because the leftists have no leg to stand on when it comes to covid. When the debate ground is fair and these people have to actually defend their claims based on facts and evidence, they lose every time. They can’t beat Rogan on the facts, so they seek to beat him through censorship.

Multiple studies have now been released which prove that Ivermectin is a safe and effective treatment for covid, greatly reducing the number of hospitalizations and deaths. But, because leftists and the establishment only want vaccinations (for some reason…), millions of lives have been lost that could have been saved. What this shows is that leftists do not actually care about saving lives, they only care that people submit to their agenda. The covid vaccines are ineffective and unnecessary, but they represent public fealty to leftist authority, and that is all that matters.

There is even less logical support for the vax mandates, which are designed to force people to accept vaccines through coercion. Leftists claim this is not force because they think force only entails holding a gun to someone’s head (which they would do if they thought they could get away with it). This is not reality. Force also includes taking away people’s rights and removing them from the economy. It includes making people’s lives miserable until they “choose” to comply.

The biggest leftist lie when it comes to covid and the primary justification for the authoritarianism and censorship is the claim that unvaxxed people are a threat to everyone else, and they have no right to put other people at risk. Again, you will never see a leftist try to defend this moronic claim in a fair debate forum because it cannot be supported. If the vaccines worked, then vaxxed people should have nothing to fear from the unvaxxed. If vaxxed people still have to worry about contracting covid and dying from covid, then the vaccines MUST NOT WORK.

And this is the reality leftists and the media do not want to talk about. Vaxxed people are just as likely to transmit the virus to others. Vaxxed people are just as likely to contract covid as the unvaxxed. Vaxxed people still end up in ICU and still die from covid, and some state numbers indicate that vaxxed people are more likley to die from covid. As a point of reference, in the state of Massachusetts alone there have been over 262,000 fully vaccinated people who still ended up infected with covid and 1054 deaths according to official numbers. That is an infection fatality rate of 0.4%, which is HIGHER than the national average IFR of 0.27%.

To summarize, the vaccines are pointless and vax mandates are criminal. Leftists cannot defend either one on scientific or moral grounds. Their only option is to silence anyone who has the guts to talk about the truth. They are weaklings with no reason in their heads, and these are the types of people that always turn to mass censorship as a tool to legitimize their ideology.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden Fri, 02/04/2022 - 23:40

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Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate…

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Low Iron Levels In Blood Could Trigger Long COVID: Study

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate iron levels in their blood due to a COVID-19 infection could be at greater risk of long COVID.

(Shutterstock)

A new study indicates that problems with iron levels in the bloodstream likely trigger chronic inflammation and other conditions associated with the post-COVID phenomenon. The findings, published on March 1 in Nature Immunology, could offer new ways to treat or prevent the condition.

Long COVID Patients Have Low Iron Levels

Researchers at the University of Cambridge pinpointed low iron as a potential link to long-COVID symptoms thanks to a study they initiated shortly after the start of the pandemic. They recruited people who tested positive for the virus to provide blood samples for analysis over a year, which allowed the researchers to look for post-infection changes in the blood. The researchers looked at 214 samples and found that 45 percent of patients reported symptoms of long COVID that lasted between three and 10 months.

In analyzing the blood samples, the research team noticed that people experiencing long COVID had low iron levels, contributing to anemia and low red blood cell production, just two weeks after they were diagnosed with COVID-19. This was true for patients regardless of age, sex, or the initial severity of their infection.

According to one of the study co-authors, the removal of iron from the bloodstream is a natural process and defense mechanism of the body.

But it can jeopardize a person’s recovery.

When the body has an infection, it responds by removing iron from the bloodstream. This protects us from potentially lethal bacteria that capture the iron in the bloodstream and grow rapidly. It’s an evolutionary response that redistributes iron in the body, and the blood plasma becomes an iron desert,” University of Oxford professor Hal Drakesmith said in a press release. “However, if this goes on for a long time, there is less iron for red blood cells, so oxygen is transported less efficiently affecting metabolism and energy production, and for white blood cells, which need iron to work properly. The protective mechanism ends up becoming a problem.”

The research team believes that consistently low iron levels could explain why individuals with long COVID continue to experience fatigue and difficulty exercising. As such, the researchers suggested iron supplementation to help regulate and prevent the often debilitating symptoms associated with long COVID.

It isn’t necessarily the case that individuals don’t have enough iron in their body, it’s just that it’s trapped in the wrong place,” Aimee Hanson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge who worked on the study, said in the press release. “What we need is a way to remobilize the iron and pull it back into the bloodstream, where it becomes more useful to the red blood cells.”

The research team pointed out that iron supplementation isn’t always straightforward. Achieving the right level of iron varies from person to person. Too much iron can cause stomach issues, ranging from constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain to gastritis and gastric lesions.

1 in 5 Still Affected by Long COVID

COVID-19 has affected nearly 40 percent of Americans, with one in five of those still suffering from symptoms of long COVID, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Long COVID is marked by health issues that continue at least four weeks after an individual was initially diagnosed with COVID-19. Symptoms can last for days, weeks, months, or years and may include fatigue, cough or chest pain, headache, brain fog, depression or anxiety, digestive issues, and joint or muscle pain.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 12:50

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Walmart joins Costco in sharing key pricing news

The massive retailers have both shared information that some retailers keep very close to the vest.

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As we head toward a presidential election, the presumed candidates for both parties will look for issues that rally undecided voters. 

The economy will be a key issue, with Democrats pointing to job creation and lowering prices while Republicans will cite the layoffs at Big Tech companies, high housing prices, and of course, sticky inflation.

The covid pandemic created a perfect storm for inflation and higher prices. It became harder to get many items because people getting sick slowed down, or even stopped, production at some factories.

Related: Popular mall retailer shuts down abruptly after bankruptcy filing

It was also a period where demand increased while shipping, trucking and delivery systems were all strained or thrown out of whack. The combination led to product shortages and higher prices.

You might have gone to the grocery store and not been able to buy your favorite paper towel brand or find toilet paper at all. That happened partly because of the supply chain and partly due to increased demand, but at the end of the day, it led to higher prices, which some consumers blamed on President Joe Biden's administration.

Biden, of course, was blamed for the price increases, but as inflation has dropped and grocery prices have fallen, few companies have been up front about it. That's probably not a political choice in most cases. Instead, some companies have chosen to lower prices more slowly than they raised them.

However, two major retailers, Walmart (WMT) and Costco, have been very honest about inflation. Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon's most recent comments validate what Biden's administration has been saying about the state of the economy. And they contrast with the economic picture being painted by Republicans who support their presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.

Walmart has seen inflation drop in many key areas.

Image source: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Walmart sees lower prices

McMillon does not talk about lower prices to make a political statement. He's communicating with customers and potential customers through the analysts who cover the company's quarterly-earnings calls.

During Walmart's fiscal-fourth-quarter-earnings call, McMillon was clear that prices are going down.

"I'm excited about the omnichannel net promoter score trends the team is driving. Across countries, we continue to see a customer that's resilient but looking for value. As always, we're working hard to deliver that for them, including through our rollbacks on food pricing in Walmart U.S. Those were up significantly in Q4 versus last year, following a big increase in Q3," he said.

He was specific about where the chain has seen prices go down.

"Our general merchandise prices are lower than a year ago and even two years ago in some categories, which means our customers are finding value in areas like apparel and hard lines," he said. "In food, prices are lower than a year ago in places like eggs, apples, and deli snacks, but higher in other places like asparagus and blackberries."

McMillon said that in other areas prices were still up but have been falling.

"Dry grocery and consumables categories like paper goods and cleaning supplies are up mid-single digits versus last year and high teens versus two years ago. Private-brand penetration is up in many of the countries where we operate, including the United States," he said.

Costco sees almost no inflation impact

McMillon avoided the word inflation in his comments. Costco  (COST)  Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti, who steps down on March 15, has been very transparent on the topic.

The CFO commented on inflation during his company's fiscal-first-quarter-earnings call.

"Most recently, in the last fourth-quarter discussion, we had estimated that year-over-year inflation was in the 1% to 2% range. Our estimate for the quarter just ended, that inflation was in the 0% to 1% range," he said.

Galanti made clear that inflation (and even deflation) varied by category.

"A bigger deflation in some big and bulky items like furniture sets due to lower freight costs year over year, as well as on things like domestics, bulky lower-priced items, again, where the freight cost is significant. Some deflationary items were as much as 20% to 30% and, again, mostly freight-related," he added.

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Walmart has really good news for shoppers (and Joe Biden)

The giant retailer joins Costco in making a statement that has political overtones, even if that’s not the intent.

Published

on

As we head toward a presidential election, the presumed candidates for both parties will look for issues that rally undecided voters. 

The economy will be a key issue, with Democrats pointing to job creation and lowering prices while Republicans will cite the layoffs at Big Tech companies, high housing prices, and of course, sticky inflation.

The covid pandemic created a perfect storm for inflation and higher prices. It became harder to get many items because people getting sick slowed down, or even stopped, production at some factories.

Related: Popular mall retailer shuts down abruptly after bankruptcy filing

It was also a period where demand increased while shipping, trucking and delivery systems were all strained or thrown out of whack. The combination led to product shortages and higher prices.

You might have gone to the grocery store and not been able to buy your favorite paper towel brand or find toilet paper at all. That happened partly because of the supply chain and partly due to increased demand, but at the end of the day, it led to higher prices, which some consumers blamed on President Joe Biden's administration.

Biden, of course, was blamed for the price increases, but as inflation has dropped and grocery prices have fallen, few companies have been up front about it. That's probably not a political choice in most cases. Instead, some companies have chosen to lower prices more slowly than they raised them.

However, two major retailers, Walmart (WMT) and Costco, have been very honest about inflation. Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon's most recent comments validate what Biden's administration has been saying about the state of the economy. And they contrast with the economic picture being painted by Republicans who support their presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.

Walmart has seen inflation drop in many key areas.

Image source: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Walmart sees lower prices

McMillon does not talk about lower prices to make a political statement. He's communicating with customers and potential customers through the analysts who cover the company's quarterly-earnings calls.

During Walmart's fiscal-fourth-quarter-earnings call, McMillon was clear that prices are going down.

"I'm excited about the omnichannel net promoter score trends the team is driving. Across countries, we continue to see a customer that's resilient but looking for value. As always, we're working hard to deliver that for them, including through our rollbacks on food pricing in Walmart U.S. Those were up significantly in Q4 versus last year, following a big increase in Q3," he said.

He was specific about where the chain has seen prices go down.

"Our general merchandise prices are lower than a year ago and even two years ago in some categories, which means our customers are finding value in areas like apparel and hard lines," he said. "In food, prices are lower than a year ago in places like eggs, apples, and deli snacks, but higher in other places like asparagus and blackberries."

McMillon said that in other areas prices were still up but have been falling.

"Dry grocery and consumables categories like paper goods and cleaning supplies are up mid-single digits versus last year and high teens versus two years ago. Private-brand penetration is up in many of the countries where we operate, including the United States," he said.

Costco sees almost no inflation impact

McMillon avoided the word inflation in his comments. Costco  (COST)  Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti, who steps down on March 15, has been very transparent on the topic.

The CFO commented on inflation during his company's fiscal-first-quarter-earnings call.

"Most recently, in the last fourth-quarter discussion, we had estimated that year-over-year inflation was in the 1% to 2% range. Our estimate for the quarter just ended, that inflation was in the 0% to 1% range," he said.

Galanti made clear that inflation (and even deflation) varied by category.

"A bigger deflation in some big and bulky items like furniture sets due to lower freight costs year over year, as well as on things like domestics, bulky lower-priced items, again, where the freight cost is significant. Some deflationary items were as much as 20% to 30% and, again, mostly freight-related," he added.

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