...

There are statements from leading editors-in-chief of the public services that say that people like Wolfgang Wodarg or Sucharit Bhakdi [two high-profile critics with an accomplished medical / research background; S.R.] are generally not to be invited to talk shows on the subject. The bubble should stay as tightly sealed as possible.

Again and again I wonder why almost all of my colleagues so willingly and uncritically adopt this narrative from the government and from a few scientists (selected by the government) and disseminate it further. As already mentioned, concern for your own health or that of relatives certainly plays a role. But there is more. 

In the last few years, something called “attitude journalism” has emerged. It is an intellectual and moralising arrogance that I think is spreading more and more. You simply belong to the “good guys”, to those who are on the “right side”. One believes that one has to instruct the mistaken citizen. 

It is no longer a question of neutrality, but of representing the “right cause”, and surprisingly often this coincides with the interests of the government. The sentence by Hanns-Joachim Friedrichs mentioned above has even been completely reinterpreted in the meantime, in the sense of “attitude journalism”. 

But this is increasingly alienating journalists from a good part of their clientele. 

In the 1990s, the red carpet was rolled out to us reporters, editors, and presenters when we showed up anywhere in the country. Today we almost have to be happy when people don’t shout “Lying press!” [Lügenpresse; a term adopted by the Nazis in the Third Reich for the Jewish, communist, and foreign press; S.R.]. Of course, this term is wrong and should be rejected because of its history, but we journalists play a large part in the increasing alienation.

To be fair, the aforementioned “attitude journalism” only applies to some of the journalists, but mostly to their prominent representatives. Many of my colleagues seem to be overwhelmed by the complexity of the subject. Not intellectually, but rather because there is no time to dig into these things alongside the daily routine work. Close to impossible if you still have to do homeschooling with the children in the evening. Others simply lack interest in the subject. 

In any case, one reason is the fear of attracting negative attention through overly critical statements. The self-reinforcing momentum of the mainstream bubble ensures that hardly anyone wants to swim against the current. Although a good number of the editors are on permanent contracts, there is great concern about the consequences. As I can observe in myself. 

A fundamental problem with the mainstream bubble is that it either ignores or suppresses what is outside the bubble or perceives and interprets it from within that bubble. And so most mainstream journalists know the statements and positions of critical thinkers like Wodarg and Bhakdi (to name just two of many) only from reports in the mainstream media, which are of course biased accordingly. Hardly anyone takes the trouble to actually draw from the numerous alternative sources.

This report is of course only a subjective assessment. Most of my fellow journalists would see it completely differently. However, I am not so concerned here with assessing the danger of the corona virus or the appropriateness of government measures. My concern is that in the corona crisis, in my opinion, journalistic standards and principles have been increasingly thrown overboard, as I have tried to at least indicate. 

This in turn ensures that the media have become virtually meaningless as a democratic corrective, which in turn plays into the hands of political aspirations to power. 

George Orwell is reported to have said that journalism is when you publish something that someone does not want published. Everything else is propaganda. Measured against this claim, it has to be said that the mainstream media in the corona crisis to 99 percent only deliver propaganda. 

I myself have the naive hope of still being able to make a difference, in whatever way, because freedom of the press is in and of itself an extremely important asset in a democratically free society. I still believe in that.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2021/02/06/the-mainstream-bubble/

Note the picture of the TV/radio station used in the original German article, possibly used to indicate the place of employment of the author... . Here are three Gus's pictures of the same place, which is only a stone throw from the Bundestag:

ARD

Below is a comment from a German reader.

The comment has been translated:

After all, Corona opened the author's eyes. It started earlier. Journalism has been in crisis since the Internet spread in the 1990s. On the one hand because of copy + paste and rampant confirmation bias, on the other hand because of time and cost pressures thanks to declining customers. To this day, the latter has ensured ever more consolidation and concentration on the market: titles and positions are being deleted, editorial offices thinned out and merged. So too does the plurality. Evil one could say: The risk of incest increases as the population shrinks. And less and less shout more and more shrill and hide behind the battle slogan "freedom of the press": In 2008 Russia did not "attack" Georgia, but Russia was the scapegoat. In 2009/10 a young Dr. Drosten home stories with the swine flu, but tons of useless vaccine had to be destroyed. In 2014 the EU and the USA set fire to Kiev, the future Federal President issued a guarantee that did not last 24 hours, but Putin was the villain and, according to MH-17, even Satan in person. In 2015, a homemade migration crisis drove further wedges into society, but very few journalists were critical in a sea full of jubilant Persians, who polarized with their agitation more than the refugees themselves could ever have been able to do. In 2018 everyone is talking about Greta, but only very few journalists question it. In 2020, questioning will even be banned by the RKI boss - the fourth power in the state is adhering to it and thus revealing its own self-image. The circles are getting closer.

Last summer, the ARD stations then celebrated themselves and announced record numbers for viewers and listeners, in the same breath with "reliable information". The handful of clocking agencies are named. All other sources are haram, if they contradict, no matter how high-quality their craftsmanship and content may be.

This self-knowledge article is a small milestone in the right direction. But under the article the "Dialogue with ARD" is linked. Any criticism is wiped away by those responsible as if they were the infallible keepers of the Grail. And post-factual experience teaches that wrong decisions are followed by further wrong decisions: even more of the wrong medicine! As a result, it can be assumed that journalistic standards will be honed even further and that popular idiocy will increase dramatically, even critical thinking will be lost on a large scale. When did the DLF again crush its former institution of the hourly 15-minute news?

By the way: In the USA the establishment (one could also call it the "media-political elite complex") is on the verge of incorporating other fighting terms after the conspiracy theorist: extremist, terrorist, bigot (cultist, zealot), racist. In the next escalation stage, will everyone be declared crazy who does not unconditionally share the "prevailing opinion"?

See also: What If the Coronavirus Had Spread Without Detection?

Please note that some genuine "contrary to the official narrative" information are often taken over by crackpots and loonies...  Decent questioning journalists get wrapped up into a political agenda, etc...

Note note: It is possible that the official narrative is the correct one... But in search for the truth we need to explore every avenues rather than gobble the refined starch... We know that we've been deceived on massive scales before, and we know that Julian Assange is still in prison for letting us see the TRUTH...

Note note note: If we let some experts tell us the way it is, Galileo would still be un-pardoned...

Note note note note: Because Greta has been mentioned with global warming and more recently the Indian farmers does not mean that "she is wrong", but she's been use as a mouth piece to motivate the young people to understand some issues... The Indian farmers issue is about little people versus mega multinationals... The global warming issue is about "the long summer becoming longer"....

If half a million people in the United States were murdered by an evil cult, the leaders of which said that they would keep killing thousands a day to satisfy their rapacious urge for power and money, what do you think the response would be?

The last US mass casualty event that came close in scale was the 2001 terrorist attacks, when some 3,000 people were killed in a single day. The reaction after 9/11 was swift and dramatic. All levels of government decried the loss of innocent life. The White House launched a “war on terror”, spending $6.4 trillion by 2019, according to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, and established an entirely new federal government department, Homeland Security, which is the third largest. 

Congress passed the Patriot Act, which was used to justify a mass surveillance program over the entire population to find anyone remotely sympathetic to the murderers. The corporate media relentlessly denounced the evil masterminds of the attacks and the detestable, radical ideology that motivated them. A special facility at Guantánamo Bay was established to jail and torture anyone perceived to be involved. Muslims were rounded up in the US and around the world. Hundreds of thousands were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as more than 1.5 million troops were rotated through those countries over the next two decades.

It was as close as a country gets to a “total mobilisation”—mustering public sentiment, almost all media outlets, the entire political class and education system, from primary schools to universities, and recruiting and directing a huge array of national resources and human activity to a single end. All of it, allegedly, was for the safety and wellbeing of US citizens: to make sure that the World Trade Center deaths would not be in vain and to prevent such a loss of life ever happening again.

We know that there was a great deal of bullshit and lies in the response, that the terrorist attacks were used as a pretext for wars that sections of the political and military establishment were intent on waging anyway. But still, you might think that, if there were a series of mass casualty events claiming the lives of 3,000 people per day over an extended period, reaching a total of half a million deaths, with no end in sight, every level of government in the United States might mobilise resources in an unprecedented way to stop the carnage, right?

Yet what we in fact see are state and federal governments, Republican and Democratic alike, overseeing the deaths, which are indeed close to 500,000 in just one year. The US ruling class has allowed the coronavirus to become endemic in the population because of a twisted ideology that valorises corporate profits above human life. 

t’s not just the United States. Around the world, the response has been similar. Britain lost 70,000 civilian lives in all of World War Two. Nearly 120,000 have perished in just one year of this pandemic. France has lost more than 80,000, Italy more than 90,000, Spain and Germany more than 60,000 each. Brazil is close to one-quarter of a million. Mexico 170,000. India more than 150,000. The global total is close to 2.4 million.

And nowhere has the response come anywhere close to the frenzy after 9/11. The nature of the government has made little difference. Far-right, centre-right, liberal and centre-left administrations have all shown that their loyalties are one and the same. When the conflict emerges between making profits and saving human life, invariably the latter has been sacrificed. 

There have been half measures here and there, and belated lockdowns or mask mandates in several countries when the hospitalisation and death rates got so high that the capitalist economy was being battered anyway. But at each opportunity, any serious attempt to bring community transmission under control was abandoned to allow businesses to resume making profits.

The approach is akin to waiting days after a major accident to admit a car crash victim to hospital, in the hope of saving money, then sending them home with only half their still bleeding wounds sutured and dressed, again to save on expenses. 

Yet the countries with the worst outcomes have generally been the ones with the most resources and wealth. The enormous resources at their disposal—resources that are outlaid in the blink of an eye to launch a war, to give as handouts to the rich, to fund corporate welfare and company tax cuts—have simply not been deployed on a scale that would come close to addressing the challenge.  

It’s not a case of unfortunate errors and miscalculations. They simply do not care. In almost every country, they have attacked as enemies of freedom those advocating measures to bring the death rate down decisively. They have again and again tried to downplay the seriousness of the situation and accused their opponents of overreacting. 

Why? Because unlike an event like 9/11 in the United States, or some of the other terrorist attacks in Europe that in some instances have claimed only one or two lives, all obvious responses to the pandemic involve significant and ongoing spending on the health and welfare of workers and the poor—when the rich and powerful have spent decades cutting spending in those areas. If they were to engage in mass public spending to protect the lives and livelihoods of the majority of the population, it would only raise the question: Why can’t this be “the norm”, instead of the trillions spent on war and big business tax cuts?

Try as they might, it is difficult for politicians and their corporate media and big-business backers to leverage the pandemic for nefarious ends like war, corporate tax cuts or attacks on social spending in the name of national unity. They cannot credibly blame China (not that it stops them) or “radical Islam” for the overflowing hospitals. It’s down to them, and they know it. 

Almost the entire world over, the ruling class response is to hope that the vaccines, from which their friends in the pharmaceutical industry will make billions of dollars, will put an end to the worst of it. Yet the rich countries have bought up the lion’s share, meaning that the virus will continue to devastate poor countries.

In the meantime, as mutant coronavirus strains spread across the planet, bringing into question the efficacy of the new vaccines, it’s business as usual: thousands dying every day because there’s still money to be made. It tells you everything you need to know about how the ruling class thinks—and what they think the rest of us are really worth.

Read more:

https://redflag.org.au/node/7546

This article is a bit harsh on the system, but we deserve a bit of harshness. At some stage or another, we will be told that "as nearly everyone has been vaccinated, we can lift lockdowns restrictions. to a point. Then a new pandemic will hit us. At this stage it is hard to know how long restrictions of movement will be in place for. Wearing masks will be in place a bit longer... Already EVEN BEFORE VACCINATION, the number of registered Covid cases has dropped by 50 per cent, worldwide... Is this due to less testing?

Meanwhile we have to know the statistics of "normal deaths" versus "extra Covid-deaths" as well as other deaths with a Covid-infection, all computed versus the increase in world population. The Covid-death rate in the USA has been calculated to be a whopping 36 per cent happening in care homes for the oldies. A large portion of the rest is still with people above 80 years of age. 

So is vaccination the way to go? Is isolation/protection of the old and sick a better management of the situation? Is vaccination going to be a 100 per cent solution? If not, how do we care about the balance of infected people or possible infection? Which vaccine works best?

In regard to this pandemic, we are still in the process of finding things out, unlike the global warming theory which is highly provable.

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'Outnumbered' panelists weigh in after the Ben & Jerry's brand tweeted that the U.S. should return stolen land to indigenous groups

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iKu_pMB6cA

MEANWHILE:

Megyn Kelly discusses her unique and patriotic way of celebrating July 4th, the true meaning of Independence Day and how fortunate we are to celebrate this holiday and this country, her party that featured an actual marching band, the inspiration of the Declaration of Independence, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC8mmYPFjNI

IN AUSTRALIA, ANOTHER COLONIAL ANGLOSAXON SPACE, WE'RE TRYING TO FIND OUR VOICE.... IN WHICH THE FIRST NATION PEOPLE CAN FIND UNDERSTANDING, RESPECT AND A COOPERATIVE FUTURE.

In late 2023, Australians will have their say in a referendum about whether to change the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

The Voice would be an independent and permanent advisory body. It would give advice to the Australian Parliament and Government on matters that affect the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have called for members of the Voice to be chosen by First Nations peoples based on the wishes of local communities.

Read the referendum question and constitutional amendment.

https://voice.gov.au/

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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....