Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
I’ve listened to Marlene Dietrich sing this song more often than I can remember, but it never fails to send chills down my spine. The first three verses were written by Peter Seeger in 1955, but it was Joe Hickerson who added the final two in 1960, making it a circular song; the flowers are picked for the soldiers resting in the graveyards, then they grow again on those same graveyards, only to be picked again for yet new soldiers, ad infinitum:
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?
A couple of weeks ago an Icelandic survey showed how 93% of the population still believe all the restrictions, lockdowns, border closures and travel bans of the last three years were fully justified; that they were inevitable. No matter if our next-neighbouring country, the Faroe Islands, didn’t do it and did better than us. No matter if our Swedish neighbours didn’t do it, also doing much better than us. Still, they believe it.
When will they ever learn?
I thought of this when I saw Alex Berenson’s account of a new New York Times interview with Bill Gates. Gates has learned all the wrong lessons from Covid, Berenson says, and he has the power to drive public health policy in dangerous directions.
Apparently, Gates is terrified of what the next pandemic might bring. If it will spread through surface droplets, be sexually transmitted, if it will be the result of bioterrorism. To prepare, Gates wants a Global Emergency Corps:
The Emergency Corps plans to run drills to practice for outbreaks. The exercises will make sure that everyone — governments, health care providers, emergency health workers — knows what to do when a potential outbreak emerges.
In other words, it looks as if Gates has fallen into the trap of panicking about a very scary, but highly improbable, almost impossible event, and lost sight of everything else.
When will he ever learn?
Marlene Dietrich’s interpretation of ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ has unique depth to it. Perhaps because during World War II she travelled through Europe and sang to the soldiers, to those very soldiers for whose graves the flowers were picked, and on whose graves they grew again.
“When will they ever learn?”
Who are “they”? It isn’t the generals, the dictators. “They” are the soldiers who head to the battlefield instead of refusing to, their sweethearts who pick the flowers for their graves instead of forbidding them to leave. For war doesn’t happen without soldiers, and, as Lysistrata teaches us it doesn’t happen without their sweethearts either; war can only happen with the support of people, or with their indifference.
It happens, again and again, and it happens because of all of us.
When will we ever learn?
At the outset, the coronavirus pandemic was likened to a war. A war against an invisible enemy. Soon enough it turned into a civil war; a war between the masked and the unmasked, between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Almost from the start, it was a war against truth. A war against reason. A war against decency. Against humanity.
In his classic They Thought They Were Free Milton Mayer describes the views of his German Nazi friends after the war. Their country in ruins, they were still unable to face the true reason for the devastation; the pure madness that had gripped not only the leaders but a large part of the population. “Yes, perhaps a few mistakes were made” they might mumble, but that was it. No reckoning, no realisation of what had been done, not only to the victims, but to themselves also, to their humanity, their integrity, their self-worth.
They never learned.
Perhaps the truth in ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ is the final truth. Perhaps we are simply doomed to repeat the same mistakes, the same catastrophes, over and over again. Perhaps the boulder of Sisyphus is the only philosopher’s stone there is.
But this I refuse to believe. This you refuse to believe. (When will we ever learn?)
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the state of mind of Bill Gates. He may go mad for all I care. He is but one man. He has money and power, but in the end he’s just one man.
What I care about is why 93% of my nation still believe an obvious lie. Among them are highly intelligent, well-meaning people. I have good friends among them. But they still believe this.
We’ve never given up exposing the facts, appealing to reason, explaining. Just like Sisyphus, I sometimes think. For they still believe it.
Why?
Answering this question is the single most important task at hand.
This is no easy task. For to answer this question we need meticulous step-by-step analysis, based on cold and hard rationality, never jumping to conclusions, never letting our feelings or predjudices get in the way. Only that way may be able to find the answer. And only armed with that answer can we really break the deadly cycle now pushed for more strongly than ever by Bill Gates and his cronies.
That’s the only way they will ever learn.
This article was first published on Thorsteinn Siglaugsson’s Substack newsletter, From Symptoms to Causes. You can subscribe here.
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Ah c’mon Thorsteinn. Everybody knows these polls are nothing more than a psychological tool of manipulation of the masses and the complete opposite is likely to be true. And if anyone can show a poll which doesn’t show in favour of the official narrative then I’ll take it all back. Meanwhile, apologies in advance if you’re eating but I need to dump a video of Piers Morgan here showing what a reverse-ferreting, arse-weasel he is, complete with internet receipts just to remind us of the vile person he is. Hope he chokes on his humble pie binge! Ugh, cannot stand the tosser..
”In the clip above that Piers Morgan admits that he made a U-Turn, but then he said the “scientists” made a U-Turn.
Here’s my problem with his argument. The science didn’t change, and the facts didn’t change. Many prominent scientists spoke out against the vaccines and lockdown mandate, but they were silenced.
Pfizer executive Janine Small admitted that they didn’t do any tests on transmission. So, which “scientist” did Piers Morgan speak to? As a prominent journalist with a big platform, why didn’t Piers Morgan do some due diligence on whoever the scientists were feeding him the wrong information? Why didn’t he listen to the dissenting scientists?”
https://pharmafiles.substack.com/p/piers-morgan-makes-u-turn-and-passes
Bingo.
Yeah, I was shouting the same points as the (normally most excellent) Triggernometry boys let him get away with spouting such self evident sophistry!
Let’s get one thing straight that I picked up on in this article..
Gates did not fall into a trap..
Gates along with his various cronies is setting the trap. This man cares not a jot for his fellow man. He’s a vicious, uncaring, psychopath.. whose goal is a substantial reduction in the worlds population, and for those left to be subject to the diktats of an oppressive technocratic regime. Probably.. through likes of the sycophantic UN / WHO.
These wretched people are inventing these so called ‘plandemics’ as yet another tool to obtain complete control, nothing less..
And I’m hoping that the author is being sarcastic when he says ”Gates is terrified of what the next pandemic might bring.” Gatesy is everything you describe him as and ”terrified” is certainly not in there. Nothing could be further from the truth. Salivating and rubbing his sweaty palms together in anticipation more like, because they guy’s untouchable and is clearly holding all the cards.
You got it in one..
“Gatesy is everything you describe him as and ”terrified” is certainly not in there.”
And one of the reasons is that Billy will know exactly how his next viral release can be dealt with and what prophylactics are required. Billy, Fraudci and the boys will NOT be taking any of those poisonous injections, whoops, I meant “vaccines.”
I’m curious about which poobahs got to take the saline injections instead of the poisoned ones? What was the cutoff for protection? Are they aware of the switch and how is their silence ensured? Some of the US governors and Congressional politicians have gotten covid more than once, suggesting some at least have been injected with other than saline.
Bang on.
“in other words, it looks as if Gates has fallen into the trap of panicking about a very scary, but highly improbable, almost impossible event”
How do you know it is “almost impossible”? What kind of evidence can apply? New viral outbreaks happen pretty frequently – SARS, MERS, Covid. So far none has been devastating. But suppose Covid had had the mortality rate of say the bubonic plague? How do you calculate the chances of that happening?
There’s no need to calculate it.
Feel free to try, though, or plan for it. Just leave me out of it.
Not even the COVID we actually had could have occurred naturally. A virus with human-optimised codons, a human-optimised furin cleavage site and some HIV surface protein thrown in right on the edge of the spike for good measure!
Since hygiene and antibiotics were discovered, pandemics have not really been a thing, certainly not something to spend 5% of your health budget on every year, with as yet unspecified percentage of GDP on top, as the draft WHO pandemic treaty proposes.
SARS, MERS, were cooked up by and hyped by the same people who ‘invented’ COVID, and there’s plenty of evidence out there to support that. The ‘pandemic’ thing as a means of control has been in the scheming pot for decades. AIDS is in there too, along with EBOLA. The same plan, same people, with the same end in mind..
Exactly so. In fact MERS, SARS, EBOLA etc were simply trial runs for the C1984 con job.
And largely because their squealing about “Climate Catastrophy”, after 20+ years was looking more obviously risible. Even after they had taken 1.5°C to replace 2.0°C (a figure Schellenhuber himself admitted he had just made up) as the doom threshold. Covid was the opportunity to test their PsyOps agit prop techniques and mechanisms for Tyranical Control.
Your examples are perfect. New viral outbreaks occur all the time (well, Covid had to be ‘encouraged’), yet they don’t seem to result in disaster. Not only is it unlikely, but also it isn’t ‘in the interests of the pathogen’ to be hyper-deadly (ie, if everyone dies, the pathogen also dies out).
And why are ‘new diseases’ the thing to worry about? What about asteroids, mega tsunami, super-volcanoes?
It is best not to worry about high impact very low probability events — you’ll spend all your time worrying about the sky falling in and not enough time living.
However, I would argue that there are good reasons to worry about freedoms being taken away (or risks thereof), especially given that we’ve had such an event in the recent past and our politicians are very very keen to make sure that no-one talks about what has been done to them in the name of ‘political convenience’ (or perhaps, ‘not being found out’).
Great answer!
Your examples are perfect. New viral outbreaks occur all the time (well, Covid had to be ‘encouraged’), yet they don’t seem to result in disaster.
We have a disaster if these three things happen:
1) There is a new virus
2) It is highly contagious before it is symptomatic
3) It has a high mortality rate
1) is satisfied every 10 years or so. Covid satisfied 2) but not 3). Ebola satisfied 3) but not 1) or 2) . Sure we haven’t had all three yet and clearly it isn’t that likely or it would have happened.
Not only is it unlikely, but also it isn’t ‘in the interests of the pathogen’ to be hyper-deadly (ie, if everyone dies, the pathogen also dies out).
As long as 2) is satisfied, then the virus will thrive even with mass mortality. Eventually it will run out of victims but viruses don’t do much long term planning. Black Death (yes I know it was a bacterium not virus) eventually ran out of victims but that was little compensation for the third of the population that died.
And why are ‘new diseases’ the thing to worry about? What about asteroids, mega tsunami, super-volcanoes?
We do what we can with respect to all of these. Mostly it is limited to predicting them because that is all we can do. We can do more to plan for viral outbreaks.
It is best not to worry about high impact very low probability events — you’ll spend all your time worrying about the sky falling in and not enough time living.
You can prepare without worrying.
However, I would argue that there are good reasons to worry about freedoms being taken away (or risks thereof), especially given that we’ve had such an event in the recent past and our politicians are very very keen to make sure that no-one talks about what has been done to them in the name of ‘political convenience’ (or perhaps, ‘not being found out’).
It depends on what the preparation comprises. My point is that very bad improbable things happen. So why not prepare for them? I won’t get into whether Gates proposed preparation is proportionate or sensible.
“So why not prepare for them?”
Aside from anything else, I simply don’t trust anyone to do so sensibly, without abusing their power, wrecking the world and my life. I would rather take my chances with Mother Nature.
Your examples are perfect. New viral outbreaks occur all the time (well, Covid had to be ‘encouraged’), yet they don’t seem to result in disaster.
We have a disaster if these three things happen:
1) There is a new virus
2) It is highly contagious before it is symptomatic
3) It has a high mortality rate
1) is satisfied every 10 years or so. Covid satisfied 2) but not 3). Ebola satisfied 3) but not 1) or 2) . Sure we haven’t had all three yet and clearly it isn’t that likely or it would have happened.
Humans have lived on this planet for a few million years, modern humans for about 300,000 years. Your mystery killer disease hasn’t occurred during all of this time, otherwise, I couldn’t be writing this. Consequently, such mystery diseases – should they at all exist – happen only about every couple of millions of years. It’s more rational to worry about getting struck by a lighting bolt out of the blue, as the chances for that are far greater. And I didn’t even mention getting run over by a drunk driver yet.
Damn right.
It is not possible to absolutely rule out a genuine new deadly virus. Nor encountering a climate “tipping point”. Nor an invasion next month by little green space aliens.
But it should be obvious to a reasonably bright seven year old that any of these extreme improbabilities hardly merit the investment of a groat from the public purse.
If you are seriously worried about sea-level rise (despite the overwhelming evidence that this is extremely unlikely), then copy the Dutch and build some flood defences.
Meanwhile, the money wasted with Ruinable Energy (benefitting only the Landed Gentry like “Dave Boy’s” father in law, Sir Reginald Sheffield and cynical scum like Dale Vince), might be spent on something worthwhile.
New Nuclear plant, for instance.
It is not possible to absolutely rule out a genuine new deadly virus.
It’s also not possible to rule out that we are really all daydreaming, mad kraken strapped to beds in an lunatics asylum for mad kraken somewhere on Alpha Centauri and that none of what we believe to be real actually exists. At the simplest, this nothing but another appeal to ignorance, ie, someone arguing that we must or must not do something because we don’t know something else. That’s still logically invalid and usually employed by propagandists.
Slightly more complicated: Due to man not being God, we have no certain knowledge about the future and only patchy knowledge about both the present and the past. But that’s unfortunately beyond our powers to remedy and hence, we’ll have to live with our limitations.
‘as long as 2) is satisfied, then the virus will thrive even with mass mortality’
Nope. Covid showed that most people are incredibly supine…..but not stupid…..they just took the path of least resistance as most people always do.
If the workers of, lets say, No 10 Downing St. knew (and they would have known!) people were dropping dead from a virus during its pre-symptomatic phase…..how many parties would they have held?
This is what works:
‘“I urged them to not adopt the same ‘epidemic law’ that Denmark had put in place, and which gave extended powers to the ministry of health and the police, to avoid mandates and forced restrictions, but rather to build on cooperation and trust,”
https://brownstone.org/articles/faroe-islands-the-tiny-country-that-rejected-lockdowns/
And, surprise, surprise, that is pretty much what the expensively researched British pandemic contingency plan had recommended.
‘Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all’ Balfour
Why is that relevant? Because it is common sense. Covid 19 was just another common cold coronavirus…and coronavirus experts were telling us that from as early as 06 Feb 2020
As any fule kno, Chicken Licken is a complete idiot….
“It is highly contagious before it is symptomatic”
Ah, the myth of Asymptomatic transmission.
Something else Dr Mike Yeadon has demolished – if the viral load is insufficient to cause symptoms it cannot be passed on. I paraphrase slightly.
I am not at all convinced by Yeadon’s argument (which I read once) but I am not necessarily talking about a respiratory virus. There are clearly examples of viruses that are transmitted without symptoms e.g. HIV.
HIV – wrong topic again.
The mortality rate of the bubonic plague during it’s initial and most deadly outbreaks was Up to 80% of the population killed within days. Should this happen in modern society, the survivors will be too busy burying the dead to waste much time on social distancing and donning cloth masks. The kind of pandemics Billy the Gates wants to manage with social engineering must necessarily be much less deadly, otherwise, there’s never going to be a chance for much management.
The really dangerous aspect of a Billy virus release is not the virus itself – even if it exists – it is the campaign of fear that he raises in order to terrify populations into believing that his virus is a killer.
I suspect that if any true accounting of the C1984 mortality was possible it would reveal that as many were killed by C1984 as were killed by their own hands, iatrogenically and Midazolam Matt’s ministrations.
That may be true of Covid. It is not necessarily true of future outbreaks which is what we are discussing.
You are discussing “future outbreaks.”
Yep. We don’t know …, and therefore, we must …!
https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Appeal-to-Ignorance.html
This has meanwhile been overused to a degree that one could start to call people still trying and retrying this no-trick-ponies.
My argument was of the form “just because it was true of Covid doesn’t mean it is true of future epidemics”. Are you saying that is false? i.e. are you asserting that “because it was true of Covid it must be true of future epidemics”?
Strictly speaking, your statement is as devoid of meaning as a fart. But that’s just because it has been carefully worded in this way. In order to argue with it at all, it’s necessary to interpret it as the verbally something stronger form of Because we don’t know that X is false, X must be true. Which is logically invalid reasoning.
It’s also not particularly sensible: All of our knowledge is necessarily restricted to past events. Until we have other information, we must act according to the best of our knowledge.
I didn’t say anything about the best response to disasterous pandemics, only that they are possible and justify some preparation.
To say that Bill Gates has learned all the wrong lessons totally misses the point. Gates has been a bad actor in all this from the start. He is an opportunist whos only interest is to gain more money and influence.
“Gates has learned all the wrong lessons from Covid, Berenson says…”
Gates already knows everything, there’s nothing left for him to learn. We all merely reflect his brilliance.
I’ve just posted this beneath the Billy article but it is just as relevant here:
The point Dr Mike Yeadon makes is that there cannot be a viral pandemic that kills en masse. For a virus to succeed it must mutate to ensure that it does not kill its hosts. If it did kill ultimately it would literally reach dead end. And this is why progressive immunity gained across populations is so effective and has ensured our species survival. In today’s parlance – herd immunity but I detest the phrase for its bovine connotations.
God Yeadon writes some rubbish. Hasn’t he heard of the Black Death?
Mike Yeadon writes some rubbish.. and you don’t then MTF?
Looking through your posts, you seem to advocate very similar ideas on both Pandemics and Climate Change as the usual suspects.. why is that I wonder ? You’re entitled to argue your point of course, but.. just an observation on my part!
Anyway, I’ve no doubt Gates et al would be right up for a good old plague, and may in fact be working one right now, but then.. there’s always a chance that the protagonists will succumb to their own dirty deeds isn’t there. Just think.. all those mansions, private jets, luxury yachts, and billions of quid might have to be shared out among the oiks left..
As for the Black Death..sanitary conditions and diet were a little different back then weren’t they, people were old at 30, and the rodent population was pretty rabid. Whereas, conditions in the the first world at least are totally different now to the days of the plague. As for rodents (apart from Westminster) they are pretty much under control now aren’t they..
My point is simply that a pathogen that kills its host can do enormous damage before it subsides A more recent example is the 1918 flu.
And I take your point.. and I agree with it.
As for 1918 though.. it wasn’t a flu, at least not entirely, if at all, or Spanish. It was almost certainly bacterial pneumonia. Permanent mask wearing was very prevalent.Plus soldiers out of America were given a series of Rockefeller injections, among them meningitis.
I first learnt about this from an ex partner who was a molecular biologist PhD, not the internet. She’d done a thesis on the subject. Of course, many years later I’ve dug into the internet a little, and the info I’d received from her ties in completely with my research.
Indeed. The 1918 ‘flu “pandemic” has some big question marks around it including lab leak.
And massive overdosing with Aspirin.
Reportedly, the 1918 flu did enormous damage in the USA and we can only guess if the early attempt at NPIs there were the real culprit. As I have already written a couple of times: It didn’t kill lots of German soldiers in Summer 1918 despite these were much better set up to fall prey to a deadly pandemic (malnourished, routinely overtaxed and living in cramped, unhygenic accomadation when they were lucky).
Such a good point about the protagonists succumbing to their own dirty deeds – if they wipe out a large part of the population who will be left to do their bidding?
Also a very good point about the Black Death and the resulting unforseen consequences. i.e. result of the Black Death was a change in the relationship between labour: fewer workers lead to higher wages and a shift in the feudal order.
Another interesting fact about the Black Death was that it was preceded by several years of bad/poor harvests (possibly caused by some volcanic ash effect, one chronicler mentions fields of dead animals,) and heavy rains so the populace was in a poor state nutritionally, in addition to your point about sanitary conditions.
We really don’t know that much about it but speculate as to fleas and rodents and forget about volcanos and their toxic aftermath. I understand that the super volcano in/near Tonga is still emitting vast amounts of stuff – Tonga Eruption May Temporarily Push Earth Closer to 1.5°C of Warming – Eos
Finally apparently Warren Buffett has folded his billions into the BM Gates foundation so in a sense is Gates a front man?
There are no new diseases. They don’t just spontaneously appear out of the blue.
Friday 24th March 11am to 12pm
Yellow Freedom Boards
Junction Sopwith Rd &
Harvest Ride Warfield
Bracknell RG42 4SS
‘… For to answer this question we need meticulous step-by-step analysis, based on cold and hard rationality, ‘
we’ve moved on from the Fakedemic, to the next doom… climate change’.
The French are out screaming and shouting in all the major towns. Why? Increase in retirement age. Strip them of their freedoms, put them under house arrest, make life impossible with a mask and vaccination – not a peep, but have to work a bit longer to ease the burden in the bankrupt State – uproar.
Strikes here in the UK about inflation, but about the last 2 years of Human Rights abuse… no; the ruination of our energy security, surging energy prices and edicts about cars and gas stoves… yawn.
What is needed is for people to find they have no electricity, no Internet, no flush lavatories, little food, no jobs, valueless money in their bank accounts… a bit like Germany in 1945, just rubble, disease, people eating rats to survive.
Then the 93% might – might – wake up.
You said it all.. excellent post..
Right well, expect an announcement from Teddy boy any day now as I think I’ve found the next in line to Monkeybollox; Thrush. Well, a relative of thrush anyways.
”Dutch public health agency RIVM is preparing for a possible outbreak of the candida auris, a fungus classified by the agency’s American counterparts at the CDC as presenting “a serious global health threat.” The fungus can cause serious illness or even death in humans, and it can be difficult to treat as it is often resistant to multiple antifungal medications.
In the Netherlands, five cases of a candida auris infection have been discovered in the past five years. According to the RIVM spokesperson, these were all people who had contracted the fungus abroad. None of them became ill as a result. The fungus was discovered because they visited a hospital in the Netherlands after their trip, and were properly checked for possible infections due to their recent visit abroad.”
Hmm, 5 cases in the last 5 years…Don’t think I’ll get my apple-catchers in a twist just yet then, and I always have live yoghurt in the fridge anyways.
https://nltimes.nl/2023/03/22/dutch-authorities-preparing-outbreak-candida-auris-fungus-can-lethal
Further to the wannabe global fungal health emergency ( I’m getting my hopes up with this one as resp viruses get a bit samey after a while, though I’d settle for an epidemic of Athlete’s Foot at a push ), more deets on this ‘stack. It’s definitely caused by climate change but not as deadly as ‘Cause Unknown’.
”The WHO and the CDC have rolled out their latest emergency de jure this week: “drug-resistant” fungus. There are lots of hysterical stories making the round, but I chose this next example of corporate media’s pile-on, because it — predictably — blames the fungi’s recent success on “climate change.”
Also included; Marburg has travelled to Tanzania and Richard Dawkins pisses off radical Trans folk. Again.
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/fungus-among-us-wednesday-march-22
Almost from the start, it was a war against truth. A war against reason. A war against decency. Against humanity.
I could also apply this observation to transgender marxism and not lose any sleep.