Men who wanted to be left Alone

 The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of "Men who wanted to be left Alone".

They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it. They know, that the moment they fight back, their lives as they have lived them, are over. The moment the "Men who wanted to be left Alone" are forced to fight back, it is a form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be. . . . Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these "Men who wanted to be left Alone", fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives. They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror. TRUE TERROR will arrive at these people's door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy . . . . but it will fall upon the deaf ears of the "Men who just wanted to be left alone." Author Unkown

Artin

 Artn said, where was I

You were a sparkle in my eye

A twinkle in the sky

SIlently Screaming

 Two video comments that sum up some of my views very nicely:

• @SilentlyScreaming

  We are experiencing... E-madness? A mass delusion passed person to person thru the 21st century technologies like social media, corporate media, TV and other electronic mediums. Its so strange, as one who wont let a TV in my home, to see the difference between what my eyes see, and what many people say is happening.
  The million dollar question- Is it even possible to pull back at this point?
• 
  

@SoundChaser

...First you build a Pleasure Park, strong and all encompassing as a maximum security prison. Invite all the people to come in and play. Then, when all are busy bathing in self absorption, one might turn the key...





They came from a DarkHorse Podcast on Odysee video sharing platform.

Ecstasy may damage the brain's physical defences

 Very old article I read(2005) that I re-found this morning. I read something about the mRNA Covid vaccine being able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier and that reminded me of this past article.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8314-ecstasy-may-damage-the-brains-physical-defences/

"he brain is protected by a fence of tightly packed cells, called the blood-brain barrier. This prevents all but the smallest molecules from passing through. But the new experiments show that MDMA – the chemical name for ecstasy, or “E” – somehow forces open that barrier, allowing larger molecules access to the brain.

Bryan Yamamoto at Boston University, US, and colleagues gave rats four doses of MDMA over 8 hours. “We were trying to approximate a human dosaging pattern,” says Yamamoto. The scientists also injected a blue dye, made of molecules too large to get into the rats’ brains under normal circumstances.

One day later, the researchers found the dye had made its way into parts of the brain, such as the caudate and the hippocampus. Ten weeks later, despite no further doses of MDMA being given, new injections of dye were still passing through the blood brain barrier."

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8314-ecstasy-may-damage-the-brains-physical-defences/#ixzz73QXjCtHC

 

Here is some info I found elsewhere on the internet regarding the mRNA vaccine:

 

" First of all, up until this point there has never been a successful vaccine for coronaviruses in humans due to a problem typical of coronavirus vaccine development called antibody dependent enhancement or ADE.[1] In preliminary animal trials for previous coronavirus vaccines (SARS and MERS), animals were vaccinated and seemed to exhibit a robust antibody response, but upon exposure to the wild virus, they developed a paradoxical immune enhancement leading to severe organ inflammation (especially lungs), and many died.[2][3][61][63][64][65] Paradoxical immune response in respiratory virus vaccines has also taken place in human trials, which occurred during testing of the failed RSV vaccines of the 1960s.[4][69] Alarmingly, there are some statistical indications of ADE in covid vaccine trials, but there is no way to know for sure because many key signifiers of ADE weren’t specifically addressed.[5][66][67] Due to emergency protocol, the usual method of testing animals prior to humans was bypassed, limited animal testing occurred in parallel with humans, and the potential for ADE was not comprehensively assessed.[6][7][54] Historical precedent would suggest, however, that ADE is a distinct possibility, and we may not know the true negative effects until years from now when vaccinated persons are exposed to SARS-CoV-2 or genetically similar versions of coronavirus.[8][62][68][70] Second, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines contain lipid nanoparticles that are “PEGylated”, meaning the nanoparticles are coated with PEG (polyethylene glycol). [9] PEGs can lead to life threatening anaphylaxis or other conditions such as thrombocytopenia.[10][50] Such reactions are already occurring during the initial rollout and PEGs are the most likely culprit.[11] Approximately 72% of the US population have PEG antibodies, with 8% having highly elevated levels (more than 500 ng/mL), putting them at risk for severe allergic reaction and/or future autoimmune disorders.[12] These reactions were totally predictable, with many experts warning of the danger posed by PEGs[13][14][15][55], yet participants with a history of severe allergic reaction were excluded from the trials, serving to obscure the actual negative impact PEGs will have now that these injections are being given to members of the public who have not been screened for PEG antibodies.[16][53] Also, there is some worrying evidence to suggest that PEGs cross the blood-brain barrier and accumulate in the brain, possibly causing inflammation and/or autoimmune conditions, a fact gleaned from previous animal studies on mRNA vaccines. PEGs were found to be distributed across a spectrum of tissues including the brain.[52] Additionally, nanoparticles (such as PEGylated hydrogel) are known components for state of the art medical interventions, including biosurveillance technology currently being developed by DARPA and companies like Profusa Inc.[17][18][19][20][21] The secretive nature of this technology necessitates a knowledge gap between developers and the general public, so although my research efforts have yet to verify a direct functional relationship between PEGylated nanoparticles used in covid injections and biosurveillance, I personally do not relish the prospect of being injected with such given their association with biosurveillance technology of the military industrial complex. Third, it is impossible to ascertain long term safety because of the foreshortened timeframe of Operation Warp Speed.[22] Vaccines should be tested for multiple years to adequately assess their longterm effects.[23] Short term safety is questionable too, as much of the data are still unavailable, and the current reports on safety and efficacy essentially amount to self-reported press releases from these companies themselves.[24] Fourth, the efficacy number of 90% for Pfizer and 94% for Moderna is statistically misleading, reporting a relative reduction instead of absolute reduction of risk*. Also, the trials only assessed these vaccines’ ability to prevent mild symptoms and NOT their ability to prevent transmission.[25] If they don’t prevent people from transmitting the virus (especially when safer, cheaper drugs like Ivermectin do) [26][27][58] what’s the point? Fifth, these are NOT vaccines in the normal sense. They are mRNA vaccines, which utilize a completely different process for achieving disease protection**; mRNA vaccines seek to introduce synthetic messenger RNA into the body in order to “trick” cells into producing immunogens, which then stimulate an immune response.[28] These vaccines are the first of their kind ever to gain authorization.[29] Current vaccinations are essentially an extension of phase 3 of the trials.[30] Because of the lack of long term safety assessment and the new nature of this technology, people are participating in a mass human experiment with no way of knowing the long term health effects these could cause. Many problems from vaccines are known to have an incubatory period and do not manifest until much later, which is why testing needs to occur for multiple years in order to adequately assess risk. [31] One such problem currently being discussed is the mRNA technology’s possible impact on female fertility, as it encourages the production of antibodies against a laboratory stabilized SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that contains a very similar protein crucial for the development of placenta called syncytin-1. This could interfere with the reproductive process by encouraging the immune system to react against syncytin-1, thereby disrupting placental development.[32][71] The vaccines’ impact on fertility is currently unknown as animal reproductive toxicity studies have not been completed.[33] Sixth, there was a signature for many different problems seen in the various trials and initial rollout for these vaccines, problems that are concurrent with commonly documented vaccine injuries. Injuries reported in the various trials/rollout have included, but are not limited to, anaphylaxis, Bell’s palsy, transverse myelitis, multi-system inflammatory syndrome, flash pulmonary edema, miscarriage, dyskinesia, myalgic encephalomyelitis, idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, and death. [34][35][36][37][50][51][56][59] Seventh, and perhaps most importantly, the movement toward potential vaccine mandates or other coercive policies violates humanity’s most universally accepted principles of human rights and medical ethics, especially for a medical intervention with so many known and unknown safety/efficacy concerns. The absolute bedrock of medical ethics is the right to informed consent, as individuals must be made fully aware of all the potential benefits and risks associated with a medical intervention, while still maintaining the right to decline that intervention should they so choose.[41] Mandates or coercive measures fundamentally violate historical safeguards humanity has put in place to protect us from the ever present threat of medical tyranny, including the Nuremberg Code, the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.[42][43][49] Such would also be in violation of the Hippocratic Oath, for not only do oath keepers pledge first to do no harm, but also to treat the needs of the patient.[44] This implies that a doctor’s duty primarily pertains to the needs of the individual before the needs of the collective, a vital distinction made by Hippocrates and understood for nearly 2 millennia.[45][46] Privileging the needs of the collective is a “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”.[47] While individual need is directly apprehensible and consensual, collective need is an abstract, subjective concept not easily defined. And yet who usually gets to define this concept? Such is most often defined by those in power with the most means to influence institutional narratives, turning medical professionals who treat the needs of the collective according to this definition into mere extensions of that power at the expense of individual informed consent. * Regarding the reporting on the reduction of relative risk instead of absolute risk, in the phase 3 trial of the Pfizer vaccine, for example, 22,000 people were vaccinated and 22,000 were given placebo, for a total of 44,000 trial participants. Of those 44,000, just 170 were clinically diagnosed as having covid-19 post-vaccination. Of those 170, it was reported that 8 received the vaccine and 162 received the placebo. From this ratio it was inferred that the vaccine would prevent 154 out of 162 from getting the disease for an efficacy of greater than 90%. But even as the British Medical Journal explained, “A relative risk reduction is being reported, not absolute risk reduction, which appears to be less than 1%.”[39] The supposed sterling efficacy touted by both Pfizer and Moderna are great for instilling confidence in their product, yet they were based on figures derived from only a small fraction of trial participants (just 0.38% of total participants in the Pfizer trial, and the same misleading statistical reporting seen in the Moderna trial as well).[40] ** Labeling the mRNA technology employed by Pfizer and Moderna a “vaccine” stretches the term’s definition beyond reasonable limits. Although it is claimed that such an intervention fulfills the purpose of vaccination by encouraging antibodies against an infectious disease, such does not contain any attenuated biologics typical of traditional vaccination, nor has it been proven to prevent infection, transmission, or community circulation; it may be more accurate, therefore, to label such as a “synthetic pathogen delivery device” constituting a form of “gene therapy”.[57] Links at pastebin dot com /qTZB6D5h"

Online Yoga vs Social Media

I have been trying to remove myself from big tech social media platforms lately. As an individual it feels insignificant, but if we all stopped supporting Big Tech and Big Corporations they would cease to exist, and it has to start somewhere.

I deleted my facebook for a second time. I've uninstalled Whatsapp and Instagram. And I've uploaded my entire Youtube library to Odysee.com

Odysee.com is an alternative to youtube that isn't owned by any corporation. Here is a brief description:

 

Odysee, a video website built by LBRY, Inc. using their LBRY protocol, entered beta in September 2020 and officially launched that December. As of December 2020, 400,000 people had posted 5 million videos on Odysee, and the site had 8.7 million monthly active users.

 

 

Another site that is a competitor of facebook is called Gab.com. They have their own servers so can't be shut down or censored by big tech server owners like Amazon. 

We have just recently moved to an apartment in Penticton BC so I have been posting less online Yoga videos, but now that we are getting settled I will be posting more often.

Please check out my Yoga classes at www.youtube.com/roham or www.odysee.com/@roham

I try to stream live 3 times a week but currently cant guarantee any

Lots of love and hope to see you on your mat.

We The Forrest

 "So you want to push us around a little bit? 🤔😏 Do you realize what happens when strong winds blow through a forest? Their roots will grow stronger..... So the more you push us around the more stable we will get. The more you try to frighten us the more fun we will have. The more hate you spread the more loving and inclusive we'll become. For you this might just be a game. For us it will be just another a free training program without the monthly fee's and trips to the gym. Take away our money. We will create our own. Take away our food. We will grow our own. Cripple the internet. We will build our own networks. Take away or harm our children ever again... We will crush you like ants... Humanity is on the rise and our unity and consciousness will push us to ever higher levels. Day in day out. Our lights will burn so bright that there won't be a shadow left to hide. Our love so intense, it will make you kneel down before us..... We are coming for you all! Together we will rise! 🔥❤️🙏..."

-unknown

Minimum of what everybody needs to read before they can converse intelligently

 Here is Robert Anton Wilson's recommended book list, as taken from the Books section of the official Web site. Again, Wilson says, "Not the 'best' or even my favorites, exactly: Just the bare minimum of what everybody needs to chew and digest before they can converse intelligently about the 21st Century.

 

 

1. THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM, Wilhelm Reich.

2. ULYSSES, James Joyce.

3. FINNEGAN'S WAKE, James Joyce.

4. THE CANTOS, Ezra Pound.

5. MACHINE ART, Ezra Pound.

6. SELECTED PROSE, Ezra Pound.

7. HARLOT'S GHOST, Norman Mailer.

8. GO DOWN, MOSES, William Faulkner.

9. THE ALPHABET VS. THE GODDESS, Leonard Shlain.

10. THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES, Karl Popper (two volumes).

11. CONFUCIUS: THE GREAT DIGEST, THE UNWOBBLING PIVOT, THE ANALECTS, translated by Ezra Pound.

12. THE ANTI-CHRIST, Friedrich Nietzsche.

13. CHAOS AND CYBERCULTURE, Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

14. CRITICAL PATH, R. Buckminster Fuller.

15. INSTEAD OF A BOOK, Benjamin Tucker.

16. DIGITAL McLUHAN, Paul Levinson.

17. SAHARASIA, James DeMeo, Ph.D.

18. SCIENCE AND SANITY, Alfred Korzybski.

19. PROGRESS AND POVERTY, Henry George.

20. THE NATURAL ECONOMIC ORDER, Silvio Gesell.

Found here:

http://www.rawillumination.net/2010/09/raws-recommended-reading-list-following.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson

I wanted to add that I haven't read these books yet but decided publishing them will insure I have the list at my disposal later.

Provincial Administrative Penalties Act in Alberta

 Here is a Lawyer talking about a new Provincial Administrative Penalties Act in Alberta and Stage One has gone live as of this writing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXHF_fULvwA&feature=youtu.be

Here are some of the comments under the video:

If you are in Alberta, I suggest writing: 1) Your local MLA. 2) Kaycee Madu. 3) Jason Kenney. Let each of them know you are displeased with this. If you are a UCP member/voter, include those details as well.

 I live in Alberta. I’ll be contacting officials this week in regards to this. I have also sent an email to editor Matt Gurney at the National Post requesting coverage of this. Matt is also responsible for contacting 17 other columnists and contributors. In the email I provided a written summary and implications to the topic at hand and included a link to this video. This is serious and I encourage other Albertans to not just bitch and moan, but actually contact your officials as Ian mentioned.

 
As I listen to this, I am envisioning every officer having the same powers as Judge Dredd from the movie with the same name.

 This sounds like a cop wrote the law

 We are now post rule of law in Canada. People need to wake up to the reality of the tyranny we are now under. This is late 1930's Germany and only going to get worse in the new year!!!

 Pay them if your guilty == AND == Pay them if you're innocent

 

 Police become judge, jury and executioner. Reminds me of East Germany a few decades back.

 

 

 

On a plus side, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is a NonProfit designed to fight for our freedoms.

 https://www.jccf.ca/

Secret recordings reveal political directives over Alberta's pandemic response

It's been awhile since my last post. Here is an interesting article showing that the pandemic response is curated by politicians and a cabinet of ministers that remain faceless. I'll cut and past most the article here in case it gets taken down from the CBC News website.

Link:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-covid-19-response-tension-recordings-1.5814877

Secret recordings reveal political directives, tension over Alberta's pandemic response

 

Recordings provide rare glimpse into relationship between civil servants, political officials

 

 

On the morning of June 4, a team of Alberta civil servants gathered — as it had nearly every day since the COVID-19 pandemic began — to co-ordinate the province's response to the crisis.

A few minutes into the meeting in a boardroom in downtown Edmonton, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw weighed in.

The cabinet committee, to which she and the group reported, was pressuring her to broadly expand serology testing, which is used to detect the presence of COVID-19 antibodies in the blood.

The problem was that the tests had limited large-scale clinical value and Hinshaw believed it would overestimate the virus's presence in the population. 

"Honestly, after the battle that we had about molecular testing, I don't have a lot of fight left in me," Hinshaw said during that meeting. The province had introduced rapid molecular testing kits at the start of the pandemic to help testing in rural and remote communities. The recordings reveal some tensions about that decision. 

"I think we need to draw on our experience from the molecular testing battle that we ultimately lost, after a bloody and excruciating campaign, and think about, how do we limit the worst possible implications of this without wearing ourselves down?," Hinshaw said. 

A few weeks later, Health Minister Tyler Shandro and Hinshaw announced the province would pour $10 million into targeted serology testing, the first in Canada to do so.

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• OPINION | On COVID-19, Jason Kenney refuses to take responsibility

The level of political direction — and, at times, interference — in Alberta's pandemic response is revealed in 20 audio recordings of the daily planning meetings of the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) obtained by CBC News, as well as in meeting minutes and interviews with staff directly involved in pandemic planning.

Taken together, they reveal how Premier Jason Kenney, Shandro and other cabinet ministers often micromanaged the actions of already overwhelmed civil servants; sometimes overruled their expert advice; and pushed an early relaunch strategy that seemed more focused on the economy and avoiding the appearance of curtailing Albertans' freedoms than enforcing compliance to safeguard public health.

"What is there suggests to me that the pandemic response is in tatters," said Ubaka Ogbogu, an associate law professor at the University of Alberta who specializes in public health law and policy. 

Premier Jason Kenney declared a second state of public health emergency on Tuesday. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

"The story tells me that the chief medical officer of health doesn't have control of the pandemic response [and] tells me that decisions are being made by persons who shouldn't be making decisions," said Ogbogu, who was given access by CBC News to transcripts of specific incidents from the recordings.

"It tells me that the atmosphere in which decisions are being made is combative, it is not collaborative and that they are not working towards a common goal — they are working at cross-purposes." 

Ogbogu has been a staunch critic of the UCP government. In July, he publicly resigned from the Health Quality Council of Alberta, citing the potential for political interference in its work due to amendments to the Health Statutes Amendment Act.

Shandro did not respond to an interview request.

In a brief emailed statement that did not address specific issues raised by CBC News, a spokesperson for Kenney said it is the job of elected officials to make these sorts of decisions and he said there was no political interference.

Hinshaw also did not respond to an interview request.

But at the daily pandemic briefing Wednesday, as the province announced its 500th death, Hinshaw reiterated her belief that her job is to provide "a range of policy options to government officials outlining what I believe is the recommended approach and the strengths and weaknesses of any alternatives. 

 "The final decisions are made by the cabinet," she said, adding that she has "always felt respected and listened to and that my recommendations have been respectfully considered by policy makers while making their decisions."

Secret recordings reveal tension

The recordings provide a rare window into the relationship between the non-partisan civil servants working for the Emergency Operation Centre and political officials.

The EOC team, comprised of civil servants from Alberta Health and some seconded from other ministries, has been responsible for planning logistics and producing guidelines and recommendations for every aspect of Alberta's pandemic response. 

The recordings also provide context for the recent public debate about the extent of Hinshaw's authority to act independent of government. 

Even if Hinshaw had the authority to make unilateral decisions, the recordings confirm what she has repeatedly stated publicly: she believes her role is to advise, provide recommendations and implement decisions made by the politicians.

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At the group's meeting on June 8, the day before Kenney publicly announced Alberta's move to Stage 2 of its economic relaunch plan, Hinshaw relayed the direction she was receiving from the Emergency Management Cabinet Committee (EMCC). That committee included Kenney, Shandro and nine other cabinet ministers.

"What the EMCC has been moving towards, I feel, is to say, 'We need to be leading Albertans where they want to go, not forcing them where they don't want to go,'" Hinshaw told the group.

The recordings confirm what Hinshaw has repeatedly stated publicly: she believes her role is to advise, provide recommendations and implement decisions made by the politicians. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

Hinshaw said she didn't know if the approach would work, but they were being asked to move away from punitive measures to simply telling people how to stay safe.

More of a "permissive model?" someone asked. Hinshaw agreed.

"I feel like we are starting to lose social licence for the restrictive model, and I think we are being asked to then move into the permissive model," she said. "And worst-case scenario, we will need to come back and [be] restrictive."

Soaring COVID-19 rates in Alberta

As a second wave of COVID-19 pummels the province, an increasing number of public-health experts say Alberta long ago reached that worst-case scenario.

The province has passed the grim milestone of more than 1,500 new cases reported in a day. To date, 500 people have died. Intensive care units across Alberta are overwhelmed, with COVID-19 patients spilling into other units as beds grow scarce.

On Tuesday, after weeks of pleading from doctors, academics and members of the public for a province-wide lockdown, Kenney declared another state of public health emergency. 

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However, he pointedly refused to impose a lockdown, saying his government wouldn't bow to "ideological pressure" that he said would cripple the economy. Instead, he announced targeted restrictions, including a ban on indoor social gatherings. 

WATCH | Premier Jason Kenney announces new pandemic restrictions:

Alberta bypasses lockdown with new COVID-19 restrictions

1 day agoVideo

2:36

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney bypassed a renewed lockdown as part of new COVID-19 restrictions, despite having more COVID-19 cases per capita than Ontario. Restaurants and retail can stay open with reduced capacity, though indoor private gatherings are banned and the school year has been altered again. 2:36

Kenney repeated many of the comments he made on Nov. 6.

Even as Alberta's case count grew so high that the province could not sustain its contact tracing system, Kenney rejected calls for more stringent measures and downplayed the deaths related to COVID-19.

"What you describe as a lockdown, first of all, constitutes a massive invasion of the exercise of people's fundamental rights and a massive impact on not only their personal liberties but their ability to put food on the table to sustain themselves financially," Kenney said.

Kenney said it was projected, back in April, that COVID-19 would be the 11th-most common cause of death in the province. 

"And so currently, this represents a tiny proportion of the deaths in our province."

High evidence threshold for restrictions

A source with direct knowledge of the daily planning meetings said the premier wants evidence-based thresholds for mandatory restrictions that are effectively impossible to meet, especially in an ever-changing pandemic.

As of Wednesday, no thresholds have been designated publicly. 

The source said Kenney's attitude was that he wasn't going to close down anything that affected the economy unless he was provided with specific evidence about how it would curtail the spread of COVID-19. 

"This is like nothing we have ever seen before. So [it is] very, very difficult to get specific evidence to implement specific restrictions," said the source who, like the others interviewed by CBC News, spoke on condition of confidentiality for fear of losing their job.

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Another planning meeting source said "there is kind of an understanding that we put our best public health advice forward and that Kenney is really more concerned about the economy and he doesn't want it shut down again."

The recordings suggest a desire by Health Minister Tyler Shandro to exert control over enforcement of public health orders. (CBC)

CBC News also interviewed a source close to Hinshaw who said she has indicated that, eight months into the pandemic, politicians are still often demanding a level of evidence that is effectively impossible to provide before they will act on restrictive recommendations.

The source said Hinshaw suggested politicians "have tended to basically go with the minimal acceptable recommendation from public health, because I actually think if they went below — if they pushed too far — that she probably would step down." 

Ogbogu said it is clear politicians, who are not experts in pandemic response, are not focusing on what matters most to public health.

"The focus needs to be on the disease, on how you stop it," he said. "Not the economy. Nothing is more important."

'I may have gotten in trouble with the minister's office': Hinshaw

The government has often used Hinshaw as a shield to deflect criticism of its pandemic strategy, suggesting she is directing the response. The government has at times appeared to recast any criticism of the strategy as a personal attack on her.

At her public COVID-19 updates, Hinshaw has refused to stray from government talking points or offer anything more than a hint of where her opinions may diverge.

Behind the scenes, however, there were clearly times when Hinshaw disagreed with the political direction — although it was also evident the politicians had the final say.

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In April, for instance, the government introduced asymptomatic testing in some parts of the province, and later expanded it. 

Hinshaw told a May 22 meeting she had unintentionally started a conversation with Kenney in which she expressed concern about the value of large-scale asymptomatic testing as opposed to strategic testing.  

Kenney in turn asked for a slide presentation that would detail the pros and cons of each approach. 

"I didn't intend to have that conversation, so I may have gotten in trouble with the [health] minister's office today about that," Hinshaw said at that meeting.

The presentation, she said, would include "how expensive it is to test people when we don't actually get a lot of value, to go forward with a testing strategy that we can stand behind. So we will see if the minister's office will allow us to put that [presentation] forward," Hinshaw said. 

The premier, she said, had asked for the presentation for June 2.

But she cautioned the team, "Not to get all of our hopes up or anything."

A week later, Hinshaw publicly announced the province had opened up asymptomatic testing to any Albertan who wanted it. At a news conference, she said that given the impending Stage 2 relaunch, it was an "opportune time" to expand testing.

'They don't want us to enforce anything'

The recordings suggest a desire by Health Minister Shandro to exert control over enforcement of public health orders.

Alberta Health Services (AHS), the province's health authority, is responsible for enforcing public health orders. It is supposed to operate at arm's length from government.

On June 9, the same day Kenney announced the Stage 2 economic relaunch, Hinshaw told the EOC meeting Shandro's office wanted to be informed how AHS would consult with "us" before taking any action on COVID-19 public orders.

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Alberta Health lawyers, working with the EOC, were responsible for writing the Stage 2 relaunch order that would outline restrictions on businesses and the public.

Hinshaw said she needed to verify with Shandro's office, but she thought "they don't want us to enforce anything. [They] just want us to educate, and no enforcement."

But the group's chief legal advisor was adamant.

"Under no circumstance will AHS check with the political minister's office before undertaking an enforcement action under the Public Health Act," he said

Hinshaw said Shandro's office wanted AHS to check with her first, so she could report back to his office. 

The legal advisor challenged that, saying AHS was supposed to check with Hinshaw and a colleague "with respect to prosecutions, not enforcement generally.

"So what is going on?" he asked.

Shandro's office was "mad that AHS has enforced things like no shaving in barber shops," Hinshaw responded. 

Hinshaw said all local medical officers of health and environmental health officers were already expected to tell her and the team about any impending orders or prosecutions. 

But a week later, a senior health official told the meeting AHS was "struggling about what they should be doing" regarding enforcement. 

The official said AHS had been told: "Don't turn a blind eye but don't issue any orders.

"And then come to us, and if push comes to shove, I think it will be up to the ministry to figure out if we are going to do something."

Ubaka Ogbogu, an associate law professor at the University of Alberta who specializes in public health law and policy, said 'the atmosphere in which [COVID-19] decisions are being made is combative, it is not collaborative and [politicians and health officials] are not working towards a common goal.'  (CBC)

In mid-September, CBC News reported that AHS had received more than 29,000 complaints about COVID-19 public health order violations since the beginning of April.

A total of 62 enforcement orders, including closure orders, were issued in that period. As recently as last week, AHS has said that "every effort" is made to work with the public before issuing an enforcement order. 

'Uphill battle'

In private conversations as recently as this month, Hinshaw has characterized her interactions with Kenney and cabinet as difficult, said a source close to her.

"I would say that she has used the phrase 'uphill battle,'" they said.

The source said Hinshaw has been understanding of the reasons for the difficulty, "which I think we both see as being rooted in a completely different weighting of the risks of the disease and the risks of, for example, public-health restrictions."

Hinshaw, however, "did allude to some of the meetings as being very distressing."

But the source said Hinshaw worries about what could happen if she leaves her role.

"She sees her position, optimally, as trying to do the best she can from inside. And that if she wasn't there, there would be a risk that things would be worse in terms of who else might end up taking that position and what their viewpoint was on the best direction."

Ogbogu, the health law expert, said that while Hinshaw may be well-meaning, her willingness to allow politicians to subvert her authority is ultimately undermining the fight against COVID-19.

If the government is not following scientific advice, if it is not interested in measures that will effectively control a pandemic that is killing Albertans, then Hinshaw "owes us the responsibility of coming out and saying, 'They are not letting me do my job,'" Ogbogu said.

"And if that comes at a risk of her job, that is the nature of public service."

At the planning meeting on June 4, a civil servant told the team there was concern the province wasn't giving businesses much time to adjust to shifting COVID-19 guidance. 

"I've been advocating everywhere I can to move it up, and they moved it back," Hinshaw replied.

"So you can see I have a lot of influence," she said sarcastically. "But I will keep trying."

The importance of Solitude

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/before-you-can-be-with-others-first-learn-to-be-alone

In 1840, Edgar Allan Poe described the ‘mad energy’ of an ageing man who roved the streets of London from dusk till dawn. His excruciating despair could be temporarily relieved only by immersing himself in a tumultuous throng of city-dwellers. ‘He refuses to be alone,’ Poe wrote. He ‘is the type and the genius of deep crime … He is the man of the crowd.’ 

Like many poets and philosophers through the ages, Poe stressed the significance of solitude. It was ‘such a great misfortune’, he thought, to lose the capacity to be alone with oneself, to get caught up in the crowd, to surrender one’s singularity to mind-numbing conformity. Two decades later, the idea of solitude captured Ralph Waldo Emerson’s imagination in a slightly different way: quoting Pythagoras, he wrote: ‘In the morning, – solitude; … that nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company.’ Emerson encouraged the wisest teachers to press upon their pupils the importance of ‘periods and habits of solitude’, habits that made ‘serious and abstracted thought’ possible.

In the 20th century, the idea of solitude formed the centre of Hannah Arendt’s thought. A German-Jewish émigré who fled Nazism and found refuge in the United States, Arendt spent much of her life studying the relationship between the individual and the polis. For her, freedom was tethered to both the private sphere – the vita contemplativa – and the public, political sphere – the vita activa. She understood that freedom entailed more than the human capacity to act spontaneously and creatively in public. It also entailed the capacity to think and to judge in private, where solitude empowers the individual to contemplate her actions and develop her conscience, to escape the cacophony of the crowd – to finally hear herself think.

In 1961, The New Yorker commissioned Arendt to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi SS officer who helped to orchestrate the Holocaust. How could anyone, she wanted to know, perpetrate such evil? Surely only a wicked sociopath could participate in the Shoah. But Arendt was surprised by Eichmann’s lack of imagination, his consummate conventionality. She argued that while Eichmann’s actions were evil, Eichmann himself – the person – ‘was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous. There was no sign in him of firm ideological convictions.’ She attributed his immorality – his capacity, even his eagerness, to commit crimes – to his ‘thoughtlessness’. It was his inability to stop and think that permitted Eichmann to participate in mass murder.

Just as Poe suspected that something sinister lurked deep within the man of the crowd, Arendt recognised that: ‘A person who does not know that silent intercourse (in which we examine what we say and what we do) will not mind contradicting himself, and this means he will never be either able or willing to account for what he says or does; nor will he mind committing any crime, since he can count on its being forgotten the next moment.’ Eichmann had shunned Socratic self-reflection. He had failed to return home to himself, to a state of solitude. He had discarded the vita contemplativa, and thus he had failed to embark upon the essential question-and-answering process that would have allowed him to examine the meaning of things, to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood, good and evil.

‘It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong,’ Arendt wrote, ‘because you can remain the friend of the sufferer; who would want to be the friend of and have to live together with a murderer? Not even another murderer.’ It is not that unthinking men are monsters, that the sad sleepwalkers of the world would sooner commit murder than face themselves in solitude. What Eichmann showed Arendt was that society could function freely and democratically only if it were made up of individuals engaged in the thinking activity – an activity that required solitude. Arendt believed that ‘living together with others begins with living together with oneself’.

But what if, we might ask, we become lonely in our solitude? Isn’t there some danger that we will become isolated individuals, cut off from the pleasures of friendship? Philosophers have long made a careful, and important, distinction between solitude and loneliness. In The Republic (c380 BCE), Plato proffered a parable in which Socrates celebrates the solitary philosopher. In the allegory of the cave, the philosopher escapes from the darkness of an underground den – and from the company of other humans – into the sunlight of contemplative thought. Alone but not lonely, the philosopher becomes attuned to her inner self and the world. In solitude, the soundless dialogue ‘which the soul holds with herself’ finally becomes audible.

Echoing Plato, Arendt observed: ‘Thinking, existentially speaking, is a solitary but not a lonely business; solitude is that human situation in which I keep myself company. Loneliness comes about … when I am one and without company’ but desire it and cannot find it. In solitude, Arendt never longed for companionship or craved camaraderie because she was never truly alone. Her inner self was a friend with whom she could carry on a conversation, that silent voice who posed the vital Socratic question: ‘What do you mean when you say …?’ The self, Arendt declared, ‘is the only one from whom you can never get away – except by ceasing to think.’

Arendt’s warning is well worth remembering in our own time. In our hyper-connected world, a world in which we can communicate constantly and instantly over the internet, we rarely remember to carve out spaces for solitary contemplation. We check our email hundreds of times per day; we shoot off thousands of text messages per month; we obsessively thumb through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, aching to connect at all hours with close and casual acquaintances alike. We search for friends of friends, ex-lovers, people we barely know, people we have no business knowing. We crave constant companionship.

But, Arendt reminds us, if we lose our capacity for solitude, our ability to be alone with ourselves, then we lose our very ability to think. We risk getting caught up in the crowd. We risk being ‘swept away’, as she put it, ‘by what everybody else does and believes in’ – no longer able, in the cage of thoughtless conformity, to distinguish ‘right from wrong, beautiful from ugly’. Solitude is not only a state of mind essential to the development of an individual’s consciousness – and conscience – but also a practice that prepares one for participation in social and political life. Before we can keep company with others, we must learn to keep company with ourselves.

Seven Moral Rules to Unite Humanity

Just an interesting take on what could help unite the world:

1. Help your family
2. Help your group
3. Return favors
4. Be brave
5. Defer to superiors
6. Divide resources fairly
7. Respect others’ property

An Oxford researcher says there are seven moral rules that unite humanity

Rejection

"Studies have shown that social rejection of any kind activates the same pain pathways in the brain as physical pain, meaning there’s a biological link between rejection and pain."


NYT Why People Ghost

Narcisssist Family

This hit the nail on the head:

1 . It's not okay to talk about problems

2 . Feelings should not be expressed openly

3 . Communication is best if indirect, with one person acting as messenger between two others (triangulation)

4 . Be strong, good, right, perfect. Make us proud. (unrealistic expectations)

5 . Don't be selfish

6 . Do as I say, not as I do

7 . It is not okay to play or be playful

8 . Don't rock the boat

Blue Blood

How did the term "Blue Blood" come about?

 

From Quora:

 Our family is Spanish and Italian and has studied this very subject for over a century now. The term definitely comes from the "sangre azul" phrase used by the Spanish after the Moor invasion of southern Spain, starting in the 700's. The royal nobles of Spain fled to the north and regrouped with several others in order to later fight off the Moors. The royals hated the Moors so much that they went out of their way to keep out of the sunlight and keep any trace of dark skin off of them. It wasn't so much that the Spanish were racist against what we call "blacks" nowadays or in the manner of how we perceive racism due to the American Civil War. It just so happen to be that the Africans (later called Moors) were dark skinned - something which the Spanish came to loathe after the invasion. They made it a point to work and live mostly in the dark, via candlelight or indirect light. With less sunlight, the veins did appear more blue through the pale skin, something which the other European nobles noted and were impressed by - hence coining the term "blue blood" as a literal translation from the Spanish "sangre azul." The silver theory is definitely something that has come up and has been discussed but has never been studied enough (in a clinical manner in regards to this subject) to say if, indeed, it caused it. Though, it is extremely probable and very likely because the Spanish were very fond of silver and did use it daily which would absolutely cause an ionic transference of sorts. Today, we simply translate "blue bloods" to royalty or "old money" as well as nobility. The Spanish were just extreme when it came to this area of history.

AI Future Worrisome

Wonderful article. I share Yoshua Bengio's views.

One of the Fathers of AI is worried

Chemicals in Plastic and Canned Goods Dangerous

If you haven't already started limiting your use of plastics and canned anything, this article is a good reminder it is never to late to start.

Chemicals in Food May Harm Children

First-degree Price Discrimination

"Uber recently let the cat out of the bag when it admitted that it does attempt at first degree price discrimination. Rather than charging based on the route, or demand for drivers, Uber is using “machine learning” to charge what it thinks individual customers are willing to pay"


Pulled from this article:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mattstoller2/as-democracy-suffers-digital-dictators-are-seizing-power?utm_term=.gfYw8my2jY#.ub6wLy7vJK

Interesting read. 

 

 

Chinese journalist Liu Hu always knew he’d have trouble with the authorities; he had been exposing corruption and wrongdoing for years. He was used to being hassled with regular fines and forced apologies imposed by his authoritarian government. He nevertheless persisted in truth-telling.

One day in 2017, Hu logged onto a travel site, but couldn’t book a flight because the site said he was “not qualified.” Soon he discovered he was blocked from buying property, using the high-speed train network, or getting a loan. And there was nothing he could do about it. His rights to essential goods and services were now circumscribed through an algorithm designed to discriminate against the 7.5 million people on China's “Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement” list.

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Welcome to the Chinese “social credit score” system, whose goal is to rank China’s 1.4 billion people. Conceptually, it is not that different from a financial credit score in the US. But the social credit score includes things like political outspokenness, shopping habits, friends, travel habits, and anything the authorities want to encourage or discourage. This score then fine-tunes your access to essential social goods based on a discriminatory algorithm.

Such a nightmarish system could never, of course, happen in the United States. Or could it? Three recent decisions in Washington suggest it is not as far-fetched as we might imagine, with both our courts and our government effectively endorsing the way a handful of giant companies are centralizing control over our society.

First, the Republican-controlled FCC abandoned rules that prevented internet providers from discriminating between different forms of data flowing through their networks. The result is that interfering with the flow of information, rather than facilitating it, will become a lucrative new business model for telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast.

Days later, a federal judge rejected the government’s attempt to block AT&T’s takeover of Time Warner, a giant media conglomerate that owns TV channels like CNN and HBO. The government argued that the combined company would be too powerful, and able to discriminate against rivals. The judge disagreed. He essentially said Google, Facebook, and Amazon have now become so powerful that the only way AT&T can compete is to bulk up its own power in a marketplace of goliaths. Within days of that decision, a bidding war between Comcast and Disney broke out over 21st Century Fox.

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The reason these companies want to merge the pipelines of the internet with the content that flows through them is simple: They want to build detailed individual profiles of internet users — how they browse the web, what they watch. If there’s any doubt that’s the reason, consider the judge’s own words in allowing the AT&T deal. The merger allows AT&T to imitate “highly successful, data-driven entities” like Google, he said. To underscore the point, this week AT&T bought yet another company, AppNexus, which was one of the largest remaining digital advertising marketplaces not already controlled by a Silicon Valley giant.

The hits keep on coming: On Monday, the Supreme Court, in a case involving credit cards, issued a decision that will effectively immunize tech platforms and other networked systems against antitrust scrutiny.

All these decisions are dangerous on their own. Together they show how centralized control of the internet could enable the possibility of automated discrimination on the level of the individual citizen. Which is exactly the power we are seeing deployed in China, even if the politics are different.

To understand how frightening this power is, it’s important to first understand the concept of “first degree” price discrimination. First-degree price discrimination is when every individual gets a separate price based on their unique characteristics. We accept price discrimination all the time; going to the movies and getting a senior discount is price discrimination. But in that case, the decision of how to discriminate is done by class; it is publicly posted; and everyone accepts that, in this case, seniors get a discount. It is a public decision to discriminate.

Discriminating on an individual level is different and allows for powerful exploitation and manipulation of the citizen. In areas with first-degree price discrimination, like car insurance or credit cards, there are often gender- or race-based pricing choices. With increasing datafication of society, we can see this increasingly organized to the level of the individual.

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An airline could, for instance, analyze your email for the words “death in the family” and “travel,” look at your credit limit, and then offer you a price based on this information. Or imagine a group of companies putting together a common list of troublemakers, perhaps negative online reviewers or commenters or consumers who frequently return items. All of a sudden, for no obvious reason, someone who returns an item to one store might find that prices on a host of socially essentially goods have done up.

Corporations generally deny they do anything like this or even that they can. But Uber recently let the cat out of the bag when it admitted that it does attempt at first degree price discrimination. Rather than charging based on the route, or demand for drivers, Uber is using “machine learning” to charge what it thinks individual customers are willing to pay. If there’s any doubt that this is the plan for AT&T, let’s turn to Judge Richard J. Leon’s decision, which he said that this new entity can use “customer data to inform their strategy and improve the customer’s experience in a number of ways.” This is code for discrimination. And the Supreme Court just made it clear it will be very hard to bring suits if new platform giants use this power to dominate markets.

All of this is being driven by the web giants — Amazon, Google, and Facebook — who use their power over shopping, search, and social networking to discriminate in favor of their own products and content. Amazon has built a massive manufacturing business by privileging its own private-label products, like Amazon batteries, over rival brands sold on its site. Google does the same thing, using its heft over search and maps to privilege its own products and services.

What these decisions collectively mean is becoming clearer — soon, all information production and distribution will increasingly be created for the profit of the web giants, or it will not be created and distributed at all. Media executives are now saying that within a few years it is likely that every major content company will be owned by a tech or telecom platform.

Privacy Hole Plug

Here is an article describing a simple way to start protecting your privacy online:

https://www.fastcompany.com/40551457/heres-how-to-plug-one-of-the-biggest-privacy-holes-in-the-internet

Where do you go when you Die?

Interesting news article I thought I would share and quote:

"“Can you imagine, 24 hours after [time of death] you take a sample and the transcripts of the genes are actually increasing in abundance? That was a surprise.”
Quite a few of these are developmental genes, Noble said, raising the fascinating and slightly disturbing possibility that in the period immediately following death, our bodies start reverting to the cellular conditions that were present when we were embryos. Noble found that certain animals' cells, post-mortem, remained viable for weeks. The research suggests a "step-wise shutdown," by which parts of us die gradually, at different rates, rather than all at once. "


Check the full article out HERE

Kinjo Sushi Does it Right

A good read about some things Kinjo Sushi deems important for success.