Opposition opening...

Yes, I am still alive; yes I wish I was blogging more. And yes there will be an opening for some decent U.K. Parliament 'Opposition' soon. It is simply too boring these days to get wound up about the tsunami of shit we are being asked to swallow or at least wade it. Today we can be pretty sure of one thing, Conservatives will be in opposition. 

Anyhoo...I discovered a new website (it may NOT be new, I mean I only just found it): The New Conservative where Alastair MacMillan writes about there being more reasons not to vote for the current shite outfit. In the 'About' page is exactly what I wish 'The Conservative Party' were (who are not conservative, Conservative or even remotely 'right wing'): 

• Government’s first duty to protect the citizenry 
• Unequivocal freedom of speech 
• Border control Fiscal responsibility 
• The state as servant, not master 
• The law applied without fear or favour 
• Low taxes 
• An end to grooming gangs & their cover-ups 
• A robust response to charlatan wokery 
• Economic stability before Green virtue-signalling 

Look at that! Hoorah! I could add a few things - e.g. en end to postal votes except for the previous sensible exemptions [military, disabled...] but what a start, actually being what the blue wing of the Uniparty should be.

Oppressed obedience...

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Great article from the bad cat: [LINK] 

how we got to here 

how moral relativism destroyed sanity and how objectivity can bring it back [sic] 

"all this division and vilification and rage farming is coming from somewhere, and it really is new over the last 15 years or so."

"it's an iterative negative sum game where to stay on top, you always need to be "more oppressed than thou" and so it rapidly selects for the most broken, damaged, and bereft people and shunts them to the top by acting as though they are somehow virtuous for being disastrous human failures."

  i mean, how can that possibly end save the calamity of rule by the mentally ill?

Obscurantism: othering others II...

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A quick follow up on yesterday re the Google AI project Gemini. It isn't only grossly racist, surprise surprise it is also a lefty twat censorship monster. 

It is patently a danger to freedom of speech and most definitely a censorship mis/disinformation beast: look at the Twitter thread from Texas Lindsay. It is also obvious that this is not a bug but a feature.

"Google’s Gemini AI isn’t just bias, it’s broken. Its responses are extremely offensive & arguably slanderous at times. Today, I tested it using it the exact same prompt each time, only changing names & these were the results." [sic]

That is the most obvious one but ALL are just as biased. Apologies if you do not follow politics across the pond.

Google's AI principles say that [2023 PDF] AI should avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias, also not to deceive users or misrepresent facts. Gemini itself says it is unable to generate responses that are biased or unfair...not working out too well, certainly the bias and censorship is a clear and present danger to any fair-minded person.

Othering others...

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"The nightmare feeling caused by the disappearance of objective truth." 

Othering others, "WTF?!" would be a normal reaction. But oh my fucking GOD this is worse: Google are very, very dangerous, evil fuckwits. "Don't be evil" has become 'we are the definition of evil and fuck you whitey'. They are far more than Big Brother [quote above from this link, added 1600hrs] ever was, they have literal global cover, immense power. Their Gemini/AI is really scary. [Link to Twitter]

Andrew Torba on Twitter was all over it yesterday.

OMG, OOTW: ONS OBS...

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It appears the UK Government's Office for National statistics (ONS) doesn't care what it looks like; I guess they know none of them will ever suffer any consequences: "We've led the development of a new method for estimating the number of excess deaths across UK countries". [ONS Twitter Link]. 

I BET you have, and I bet we all know why! Lots of number crunching going on [The Rustler on Twitter] but whichever way you look at it it doesn't look good for transparency and the Government hiding the stench of being directly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of their own citizens...hmmm, OOTW? 

When you look at the last few 'pandemic' years [and The Naked Emperor has done that] it is 2023 that gets the whopping lie: almost 66% of deaths disappear under the new method: excess deaths are down from 31,442 to 10,994! Both 2020 and 2021 also change but are only down by about 10%, that said, with much larger numbers dying. And 2022 is in fact 11% higher under the new method.

If you look at the previous five years to 2020 it is even more interesting: before that the numbers were low-ish and irregular, up and down, but from 2015 (see red box in image below) they were consistently much, much higher: 115,102 over the five years (2015-2019). Look at the numbers AFTER using the new method: a total of...wait for it: 838! 

The much lower deaths of 2019 are now negative: "2019 saw excess deaths drop from 6,006 to -34,408, a drop of over 40,000." 

Even before all this I suspected that the mild death total for 2019 made up a large part of the the first COVID wave of death in Spring 2020, the 'dry tinder' effect. But why would they want to make it look like their ludicrous pandemic actions of lockdowns etc., were even less necessary? After all, now, with this new method we have over half the 2020 excess 'explained away' due to ultra low 2019 excess deaths...why would they want that? Like I've said before and above, it would be the lesser of two evils: admitting lockdowns weren't necessary and in fact caused misery and death...'oh dear, we're sorry and lessons will be learnt'. 

Sounds bad, BUT that is a lot better than admitting to the HUGE amount of death they really are DIRECTLY responsible for. 

Ontario's Orangeville Otters outrage...

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First things first: a man cannot be a women, ever. Or vice versa. No amount of hormones or operations can do that. This story from December last year but I only read about it today. "A 50-year-old professor has been allowed to identify himself into a swimming league for schoolgirls".

Hat-tip: Dr. Lidiya Angelova's Substack Genuine Prospect. 

Source: [SP¡KED] from last week. 

On immediate reading you'd be forgiven for asking are Swimming Canada and Swim Ontario child abusers? Are they paedophiles? There can be NO other reason they would both think it's okay for an adult man to compete against teenage girls in swimming:  "Swimming Canada and SO believe swimming is for everyone." [Swim Ontario Statement]. 

FFS! Great, we all think that too but clearly they don't think teenage girls have the right to compete only against other teenage girls.

No doubt you know-who would approve: 'Only one oasis': 'just a waterhole', or juste en trou d'eau in French, which of course is Justin Trudeau (I'll get my coat...).

Image by BOB. 

OHS obscurantism; OMG!...

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"Above is a table of all-cause mortality data from the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS). The figures are broken down by age and sex." [LINK to HART] 

There are previous numbers and previous graphs from end 2019 to Spring 2020. We know in various countries and from many reports, SARS CoV 2 was circulating in mid 2019,... maybe before. In the UK we know it was around from January 2020. "If the virus were as infectious and deadly as we have been led to believe, why were people dying at close to the normal rate in March, but at an exceptionally high rate in April?" We know why, don't we?

"The sound of silence

More generally, why has there been so little serious discussion of excess deaths during the last two years? Why are government ministers and journalists and medics and church leaders so slow to speak out about this? Where are the likes of Whitty and Vallance? Where are the government press conferences? Where is the Opposition?"

It is simply not good enough to try to forget this, or obfuscate. Those responsible MUST be held to account. BUT those responsible control the present; "Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future."

"Covid vaccine status 

As I understand it, the ONS also possesses this data broken down by covid vaccine status, and they have supplied it in that form (presumably anonymised) to pharmaceutical companies. Why is such data not being released to the public who paid the taxes to fund its collection? If we really have had a “safe and effective vaccine”, this would be a straightforward way to demonstrate it from real-world data (as distinct from dubious modelling)."

Oxford's obdurate orthodoxy...

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Happy New Year! [edited for typos etc., 1400hrs] The blog title does not refer to the beautiful city of Oxford nor the wonderful university there, although the former and the latter have a lot to answer for. 

No, this is about some Oxford chumps living in the past and pushing cult dogma: 1. Bishop of Oxford last month called for govt crackdown on climate change sceptics (FFS, as if they haven't done enough damage to their own religion without pushing another); 2. Oxford Academics' BioScience saying the public has failed climate hysteric alarmism and that now "time is up". [Jeez...]. 

Meanwhile Patrick Moore, "chairman and chief scientist of Ecosense Environmental and co-founder of Greenpeace, the climate change messaging isn’t based in fact"... "The whole thing is a total scam". 

I know who I believe. Hat-tip The Naked Emperor.

Oh ōʻō...

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"The ōʻō was one of 21 species that the US Fish and Wildlife Service removed from the endangered species list in 2023 because they had vanished from the wild."

"Grief is a rational response’: the 21 US species declared extinct this year"...[Guardian] indeed, but let's not get carried away [obviously the Guardian gets VERY carried away: "Global heating has also fueled extreme weather, exacerbated drought and wildfire risk, further imperilling the islands' forest birds".] by the various reasons for this and blame it on something that isn't the case. 

Yes, nobody should be happy at this sad news but many have 'been extinct' for several decades, it's not as if it just suddenly happened this year: it has been DECLARED this year. Still not good. 

Also extinction is totally natural in the cycle of things: still not good but it has always and will always happen. 

Avian malaria is one reason given - linked to climate change, natch - but more people doesn't help and more people means more land taken out of natural habitat, more invasive species that are the usual followers of human 'civilisation': pesticides etc; dogs, cats (*how* many birds killed?), rats...and more recently - although obviously not in rural Hawaii - tower blocks [a BILLION yearly bird deaths in the USA alone] and wind turbines (low on quantity yes, but high on 'quality', oops).

Obfuscation, oblivescence, obnubilation, obscurantism...

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Call it what you will. But Remember Remember the 5th of November...no Ows input, just a bunch of great quotes from V for Vendetta: 

"Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse." 

"Where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission." 

"How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense." 

"Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it." 

"Equality and freedom are not luxuries to lightly cast aside. Without them, order cannot long endure before approaching depths beyond imagining." 

"No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means 'without leaders', not 'without order'. With anarchy comes an age or ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order... this age of ordung will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course... This is not anarchy, Eve. This is chaos."

Update: early hours (before 2 a.m. on 6th November in UK...but I'm not there, still 5th November here. not telling you where, but been in 4 LatAm countries in the past 3 weeks: age-old readers of Owsblog, [all 3 or 4 or you hahaha] will know that hasn't changed for 20 odd years). Anyhoo, by complete coincidence A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR, who writes the Substack 'The Forgotten Side of Medicine' posted today that [he] Would Like To Take This Day To Honor A Masterpiece, yes, the aforementioned megamovie V for Vendetta: "How my favorite movie foreshadowed the beginning and end of COVID-19" [sic: yank spelling not typos]. 

And this should be the first quote; just fill in the blank re 'this country'...

And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?

Orinoco oil output III...

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By way of celebration of the easing of sanctions on Venezuela last week (albeit temporarily for the present) here's an interesting blog from Latinometrics Substack today: Venezuela's Oil Potential and its History [LINK]. Some facts from the article: "Venezuela owns 18% of all of the world's oil"..."By 1950, Venezuela was the world’s 4th-wealthiest nation per capita." Unbelievable, right?

...and the image below shows how they are keeping most of their oil in the ground, not what they'd like to do!

And here's where I repeat a post from 5 years ago:

Hazard a guess at these two countries: 

The first country "is one of the region’s oldest and strongest democracies.
"It boasts a stronger social safety net than any of its neighbours and is making progress on its promise to deliver free health care and higher education to all its citizens. It is a model of social mobility and a magnet for immigrants from across Latin America and Europe.
"The press is free, and the political system is open; opposing parties compete fiercely in elections and regularly alternate power peacefully. It sidestepped the wave of military juntas that mired some Latin American countries in dictatorship. Thanks to a long political alliance and deep trade and investment ties with the United States, it serves as the Latin American headquarters for a slew of multinational corporations. It has the best infrastructure in South America. It is still unmistakably a developing country, with its share of corruption, injustice, and dysfunction, but it is well ahead of other poor countries by almost any measure... 

"The second country is one of Latin America’s most impoverished nations and its newest dictatorship. Its schools lie half deserted. The health system has been devastated by decades of underinvestment, corruption, and neglect; long-vanquished diseases, such as malaria and measles, have returned. Only a tiny elite can afford enough to eat. An epidemic of violence has made it one of the most murderous countries in the world. [sic]
"It is the source of Latin America’s largest refugee migration in a generation, with millions of citizens fleeing in the last few years alone. Hardly anyone (aside from other autocratic governments) recognizes its sham elections, and the small portion of the media not under direct state control still follows the official line for fear of reprisals. By the end of 2018, its economy will have shrunk by about half in the last five years. It is a major cocaine-trafficking hub, and key power brokers in its political elite have been indicted in the United States on drug charges. Prices double every 25 days. The main airport is largely deserted, used by just a handful of holdout airlines bringing few passengers to and from the outside world." 

The two countries? Answer: these two countries are in fact the same country: Venezuela. Forty years is a long time

(Highlight with cursor to see answer). 

Read the rest of the article HERE. 'Venezuela’s Suicide. Lessons From a Failed State.' By Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro at Foreign Affairs Magazine.

Orinoco Belt info, world's largest reserves isn't a joke. 

Opiate outrage...

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Well, the image below tells it's own story, and it's a horror story. In only two decades look how the leading cause of death has changed in the USA (by age and state). At the beginning of the century only the cesspool of a Federal capitol had anything other than the 'innocent' traffic accident deaths for ages UP TO 17; now suicide, homicide ad cancer (WTF!...surely not you know what?) is gaining ground. That is horrific. Then look at 18-44 year olds, oh my God! Suicide and substance abuse/addiction (presumably leading to many of the suicides!) 

Major massive epidemic that seems far worse than anyone imagines. And guess what? this week Suella Braverman (UK Home Secretary) admitted it was 'inevitable' the same would come to Britain. If you actually get to live more than 45 years then cause of death becomes more 'settled' and predictable.  

Hat-tip: Naked Emperor's Must reads today.

Obmutescent, obedible, omphaloskeptic ovines...

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Silent, docile navel-gazing sheep (OK, not sure sheep can do that easily!). We are become...nothing. 

All very depressing. The Naked Emperor's latest "A Picture is worth a Thousand Words": Or a survey result...yes, polls are notoriously more shite then ever but this definitely rings true, and in such a short time (2016-22):

Look at the wording, "definitely should...". We are lost. 

'To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.' Robert Louis Stevenson

Ongoing ocean observations II...

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Source: Ocean Clean-up Paper: Science (Advances) Hat-tip: bad cat 

"and this is why i find the issues raised by so many of the self-described “greens” today who have been so subsumed and outright eaten by the “anthropogenic global warming” story so problematic:

 because they have become the enemies of actual environmentalism and ecology by setting their goals and demands in opposition to that which actually supports the environment. 

and this has become absurd and malformed to the point of being truly dangerous and counterproductive."

Ocean observation of opaque octopus...

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...or more accurately glass octopus. Ah nostalgia! Saw this Massimo* tweet and immediately thought of Paul (nearly 13 years ago!).

Massimo links to the Schmidt Ocean Institute with the story, photos and videos: 

"scientists made two rare sightings of a glass octopus, a nearly transparent species whose only visible features are its optic nerve, eyeballs and digestive tract. Before this expedition, there has been limited live footage of the glass octopus, forcing scientists to learn about the animal by studying specimens found in the gut contents of predators." 

* proof that Twitter isn't only a raging troll infested bear-pit free-for-all.

Older opium outlook...

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Image from RFI (France)

Interesting insights into the Afghanistan government's (AKA The Taliban) successful ban on opium production. William Byrd [Link to article] writing at The United States Institute of Peace [About] says "The ban is not a counter-narcotics victory and will have negative economic and humanitarian consequences, potentially leading to a refugee crisis." 

This isn't the first time; the previous successful ban was in 2000/01 (and we all know what happened just afterwards and Helmand is 'by far Afghanistan's largest opium-producing province'...complete coincidence though). 

Banning opium production sounds like it is a noble cause right, especially as "Unlike the Taliban's previous opium ban, the current ban encompasses trade and processing of opiates, not just poppy cultivation." BUT the cultivated and harvest bumper crop from last year is not only exempted from destruction but also the trade of it can carry on. That said it does mean they are aware that bankrupting much of the rural population isn't a good thing either, so again, they've learnt from last time! 

Also, the noble cause is further tainted by the possibility that it is an economic ruse to restrict supply to allow the market price to rise and they can cash in on their large stock (super simplified and not wholly accurate, as discussed in links below). 

The article sheds more light on the whole situation and is definitely worth a read, with many references and info from David Mansfield reports at Alcis, ("Truly Unprecedented") and the Chapter 'Repositioning a Pariah Regime' from Mansfield's book A State Built on Sand is excellent [PDF] 

The war/s, COVID crises and intermittently closed borders cause -and have caused- much hardship over the years (you don't say) and 'although numerous eradication programmes have been underway for several years' (from picture link), Afghanistan has continued to be the world's main producer of opium (over 80% of total), so any ban is very likely to be temporary...ahem.

Ocean observation; orarian oblectation...

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Today is World Ocean Day, something I fully support* [Ocean Conservancy]. "If you are lucky enough to be an orarian (coastal dweller) I hope you appreciate your circumstances; if you are lucky or rich enough to ever get into outer-space and you look down at The Earth, most of what you see will be the blue of water: over 70% of the planet's surface is covered by ocean and it is because of this that the Earth is sometimes called "the water planet" - less than three-tenths (maths was always a strong point) of our globe is covered with land." just looked at that from my Our Ocean obligation...post in 2006. Hope it's still true ;-) 

Another interesting stat: How much water is there on the planet? Less than 3% of that is freshwater. Of that, nearly 70% is in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow, and 30% sits in ground water.

Of course the oceans aren't just water: there is the very bad, and the good: Obambulating

"95% to 98% of the biomass in the ocean is in microbes, which produce about half of the oxygen on the planet."

There are more than 1030 viruses on Earth and the oceans are...er, An Ocean of Viruses. "The sheer number of viruses and their intimate relationship with microbial life suggest that viruses play a critical role in the planet’s biosphere."

"Ocean viruses may turn over as much as 150 gigatons of carbon per year... "

Good info from NASA: "The story of oceans is the story of life. Oceans define our home planet, covering the majority of Earth’s surface and driving the water cycle that dominates our land and atmosphere. But more profound still, the story of our oceans envelops our home in a far larger context that reaches deep into the universe and places us in a rich family of ocean worlds that span our solar system and beyond." (well, it is NASA!)

* unlike many other 'name Days' and despite the fact that the climate change hysteria has affected ALL such institutions and charities. Also World Water Day, World Toilet Day and World Water Monitoring Day are up there and worth a mention. 

Overtly Orwellian overreaction...

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Scott Atlas is one of a small group that has been consistantly correct throughout the whole 'COVID era'. America's COVID Response Was Based on Lies [Newsweek]: 

"The tragic failure of reckless, unprecedented lockdowns that were contrary to established pandemic science, and the added massive harms of those policies on children, the elderly, and lower-income families, are indisputable and well-documented in numerous[ ]studies. This was the biggest, the most tragic, and the most unethical breakdown of public health leadership in modern history."

And there were far better ways [October 2020]:

"As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection." 

Like I wrote back then regarding the scam and casedemic: There is NO doubt about this. We are being lied to. Crimes have been committed.

Back to Scott Atlas: he writes that him nor other heroes trying to change the craziness by providing facts, data and alternative actions should be so naïve as to expect a direct apology from critics at their employers (Stanford University in his case) or from the government and academic public health officials but I think that is exactly what they should expect, and get, very loud and very clear. 

This madness must never be allowed to happen again and as the famous truism goes, admitting you have a problem is the first step to fixing it': Acceptance MUST happen to enable recovery. Without acceptance from TPTB and many lower done, there will be no real recovery. 

From back then too: 

Image by Steve Bright (here on Twitter)

Outing official opiniasters: omissions, obfuscation or obscurantism...

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BBC = Ministry of Truth. Irony lost on BBC

...or indeed all of the above! The UK's state broadcaster (Auntie, The Beeb, the BBC) "says its new Verify service will subject its own journalism to more rigorous fact-checking. But a far less neutral agenda appears to be concealed beneath this lofty aspiration". Laughable to anyone who cares to even scratch the surface. 

"The BBC isn’t exposing disinformation. It's peddling it" writes Jonathan Cook; he's 100% correct. 

 "Why the BBC is launching its Verify service is all too clear. Trust in the establishment media, and the BBC in particular, has hit an all-time low. That itself poses a threat to the broadcaster’s Reithian [*] purpose: to impress a national consensus on the public mind that serves the British state." 

[*] Lord Reith, founder of the BBC:

'They [the government] know they can trust us not to be really impartial.' (C. Stuart, ed., 'The Reith Diaries', 1975)
[Media Lens Twitter LINK]

Opulent opus omnifying our oneirodynia...

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Spiritual war [BOB]

'Spiritual war' an A3 framed print of which will soon on its way to yours truly. A masterpiece "most influenced by Bruegel’s ‘The Fall of the Rebel Angels’, which was originally thought to have been painted by Bosch. So obviously, there’s a lot of him in there too." [Twitter]

Original artwork: £125,000.00

Original artwork painted on 300gsm Saunders Waterford watercolour paper and rendered in Indian ink and watercolours.

Measures 470mm x 330mm on 510mm x 360mm paper.

From BOB. [Website]

For more information and to arrange a direct payment please email bob@bobmoran.co.uk