Our follower to Today in the Guardian, This Week in the New Typical is our weekly chart of the development of autocracy, authoritarianism and financial restructuring around the globe.
1. … what the Guardian implies by “admitting errors”
The worst short article we read this week was in The Guardian, it usually is but this one bad even by their standards. They’ve got a long screed of a piece in which so-called covid experts “confess their mistakes”… and trust me, those quotes are well warranted.
It’s an uncomfortable and transparent read, a ham-fisted attempt to sell the same old item in a brand name brand-new box. I won’t bore you with all the information, however to sum-up, the “errors” these specialists are willing to admit to:
- Undervaluing how well masks work.
- Undervaluing how efficient the vaccines would be.
- Underestimating how virulent the disease was.
- Questioning whether or not researchers must have a hand in political policy choices.
- Assuming the British public would be less self-centered.
There’s no actual rebuke of the Covid story here at all, not a single obstacle, other than some token admission that school closures might not have been needed (and they only state that because of the rise of home-schooling, but we’ll get to that later on).
One “professional” states that “there’s more proof masks work”, however she does not connect to it. And she’s incorrect, they do not.
It truly is just delusional revisionism. Like asking Icarus what he did incorrect, and having him blithely reply “Well, if anything, I didn’t get close enough to the sun.”
It is self-flaggelation so weak it becomes patting themselves on the back.
Unique mention must be made of Neil Ferguson, the avatar of stopping working upwards, who even in this limp-wristed pretense of humility can’t even bring himself to confess he did anything wrong ever, cloaking his paragraph in “we ALL ignored”, not “I underestimated.”
Worthless.
UK wants a database of all homeschooled kids
We kept in mind above that the only Covid-era policy to get real criticism in the “if anything, we were TOO smart” article was school closures. That’s likely no mishap, as the UK has reported a big rise in the number of kids being house schooled.
Thousand of pupils just did not return to school after the lockdown was over, and as a result the government strategies to develop a “national register” of homeschooled children.
Any moms and dads who want to educate their own kids in their own house, and do so without officially signing up with the state, will face “sanctions”. What, precisely, these would be they have not yet stated.
Homeschooling has had its neck on the proverbial block for a very long time, it is already outlawed in France, and the UK federal government has been gunning for it given that a minimum of 2018.
You can read one our old pieces about it here. If you’re interested in homeschooling your own kids, Lucy Davies composed an useful guide for us.
3. Jimmy’s Gypsy Joke signals censorship
British comic Jimmy Carr remains in the news this week for the same factor he generally is– he said something pointlessly offending that wasn’t uproarious.
In his newest stand-up unique, launched on Netflix in December, he makes a joke about thousands of Roma individuals being butchered as the “positive” side of the holocaust. Having seen the clip, I can confirm he does say this, and it is not amusing.
However why should a comedian known for punching down and trying to be stunning really be news? It’s what he does.
The reason we need to be worried is the response from the UK’s Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, as priced estimate by the BBC [focus included]:
Ms Dorries recommended the federal government could enact laws to stop funny people discover offensive being shown on streaming platforms. “We’re already looking at future legislation to bring into scope those sort of comments,” she informed the BBC.
Dorries said in another interview, priced quote in the Guardian …
We don’t have the capability now, lawfully, to hold Netflix to account for streaming that, but extremely quickly we will.”
I do not like the noise of that, do you?
Legislation on what’s offensive or not is the thin-end of a quickly expanding wedge. It’s not far from making Netflix accountable for offending content, to making YouTube accountable for “false information”.
There’s a really clear end-point there, and it’s overall cenorship.
Personally, I’m fine with Jimmy Carr (or whoever) being able to make all the poor-taste jokes they desire, offered I get to state whatever I want too.
I don’t like this image, and wish to stop this getting any worse:
4. The incorrect kind of Uyghur For those who do not understand, among the on-going propaganda wars in between the United States and China is the so-called “Uyghur genocide”, with the United States accusing China of assembling Uyghur Muslims and herding them into re-educaction camps, they categorize this as a “genocide”, regardless of little proof any such activity is happening.
Where it ends up being funny is how desperate the US media becomes in pushing this story, like a couple of weeks ago where the ____ tweeted out about the Chinese federal government prohibiting the learning of the Uyghur language, but published it under an image revealing a classroom with an Uyghur dictionary in it, and Uyghur words written on the blackboard.
This week the New York Times went one even more in their coverage of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony. Among the 2 athletes chosen to light the olympic flame is an Uyghur, and really pointed relocation the NYT calls “provocative” in a little hysterical style.
Not content with claiming they’re being “provoked”, the NYT does its best to recommend the athlete isn’t even actually an Uyghur, whilst present no evidence to back this insinuation.
China picked 2 professional athletes– including one it said was of Uyghur heritage– to deliver the flame to the Olympic cauldron and formally begin the Games.
Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross-country skier who the Chinese stated has Uyghur roots
The paradox here is that the NYT is completely willing to erase an Uyghur from history, if it implies they can pretend China are doing the very same thing.
BONUS: comic of the week
Here it is, presented in the beginning without remark …
Some individuals on social media were outraged the artist might suggest totally free speech might destroy society or democracy, however having actually had a look at the artist’s twitter, I’m pretty sure it’s a satire en route the media is representing the “threat” of the truckers.
Either way, there’s a fantastic second layer of significance here. Since, while complimentary speech will not ever really damage democracy, it’s entirely possible the powers-that-be will blow democracy up from the inside, and pretend it was free speech regardless of it being physically difficult.
REWARD II: Betrayal of the week
After stopping all donations to the Liberty Conboy last week, GoFundMe is now shutting the account down and (presumably) returning all the money to the individual donors. At last count the GoFundMe had actually raised around 10 million Canadian dollars.
GoFundMe claims they closed the account down due to the fact that police “convinced them” the massive demonstration had actually ended up being “violent and unlawful”…
CHILLS: Canadian Flexibility Convoy Advocates Holding Hands, Singing, Tyrants Are SHOOK pic.twitter.com/kIRsTGGYeL
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) February 4, 2022
… the financing platform originally declared any donors should look for a refund, and any unclaimed funds would be “donated to a charity”, but when the state of Florida threatened to sue them for fraud, they reversed that choice and chose to provide automated refunds rather.
It’s not all bad …
Following in Denmark’s steps, Sweden has actually now dropped all Covid procedures too. Again, while this isn’t overall triumph, and it would be absurd to let our collective guard down, it’s at least something to show some sort of development, even if there is a razor buried someplace deep in the cake.
Likewise, other nations are signing up with Canada’s truckers in their convoy demonstration. These are scenes from outside Canberra, Australia the other day …
Canberra, Australia. this is absolutely legendary. this is a revolution.!
Withstand pic.twitter.com/cGAZF0CxJc– Pelham(@Resist_05)February 5, 2022 And here are
German farmers and truckers … German truckers and
farmers have joined the flexibility convoy pic.twitter.com/R35GecJwXb– Based UK(@Based__UK)February 3, 2022 The US-Canadian border is now being obstructed in some places by what they call the #FreedomBlockade: First it was the truckers.Then along came the
farmers.And then along came the cowboys. And they are now blocking the US– Canada border. #FreedomConvoy #Freedomblockade #TruckersForFreedom 2022 pic.twitter.com/w2XhQNxO3A– James Melville(@JamesMelville
)February 6, 2022 Also, Biden slurring around like an alcholic at closing time is constantly funny …” I do not want to get
going because I ‘d keep you here too long because you know all what I’m about to, what I have actually said, and you know what I’ve done, and you know what we’re doing, and I know what you’re doing.”– Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/FypD5BoLIM– Greg Price(@greg_price11)February 4, 2022 * All informed a quite chaotic week for the new regular crowd, and we did n’t even point out the new”extremely
virulent” HIV pressure, the left’s synchronised turn versus the Liberty Convoy, or the editor of CounterPunch claiming Huge Pharma and anti-vaxxers are the same. There’s a lot of
modification in the air, a great deal of agendas in the works, if you see a heading, post, post or interview you believe signifies the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social networks and we will add it to the next edition.