H/t Sir Michael Mouse on The Lifeboat News:
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âSays somethign sane and decent?â As soon as he said â⌠asking people to recognise the severities and dangers of Covid âŚâ I switched off.
We all know (I assume we all know), by now that all cause mortality does nothing to show the âseverity and dangersâ. We all know that donât we?
It might be just a bit worse than an average Winter flu, Pat. Unclear, because of the continuing lie-storm. Standard-issue flus can be pretty bloody terrible for those who are vulnerable; and they can have âlongâ, nasty sequelae too. Flus kill people every year. We shouldnât lose sight of those sober realities because of the current wilful hysteria getting whipped up around covid by chiselling crooks.
Thatâs all very well but that thing with the mural (âŚcontinues p93)
Itâs almost as though he has some guiding principles 
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China was published some time ago now. A large chunk of this book covers the Cultural Revolution in China. If you read it you might be surprised (or not) with all the similarities to whatâs happening at the moment. Nations do quite often go insane. The frightening thing at the moment is that itâs on a global scale.
Iâm still looking for an island in the Pacific Ocean where I can escape from the total lunacy.
No luck so farâŚ
I agree @RhisiartGwilym that âitâ (whatever it is) can be a little worse than flu, and flu itself can be bad. However, from the World Hoax Organisation:
If Corbyn had any spine (which we know he doesnât) and wanted to mention âseverities and dangersâ, he should have at the very least put it into perspective.
Itâs a sad reflection on the adequacy of this forum as a replacement for The Lifeboat News that the dominant reaction here seems to be âCorbyn says that Covid is serious and that we should all be vaccinated, so heâs a bastard, and Iâm not going to listen to a word he saysâ, rather than the reaction I expected, along the lines of âIsnât it an unbearable tragedy that the UK is now being governed by Boris Johnson, rather than Jeremy Corbyn, who would have reacted sanely to the pandemic, as well as to many other problems.â
It is also a frightening indication of the power of social influence that, after reading the responses to my posting of this clip here, I had to work hard to remember the natural reaction that I had felt, and that I had expected others also to feel. (I get the impression that Karen does feel something similar, but I may have misunderstood.)
It is quite hard to remain sane here (which sadly makes it just like everywhere else).
Of course, I also expected there to be severely critical reactions to some of Corbynâs comments on Covid and vaccination - some of which I am far from agreeing with myself, as you would expect, because I want nothing to do with the vaccines, and I am horrified by the endless stream of pro-vaccine propaganda in the media.
But I expected that to be a side-issue, as it would surely be in the Lifeboat. I never thought I would miss the Lifeboat âŚ
(Perhaps Iâm overreacting. I was given a severe shock here a little over a year ago, and Iâm not quite over it yet, but Iâm mostly coping OK, and Iâm not thinking of jumping ship again.)
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I donât agree about JCâs strength of character , I know this is a low bar but he far exceeds all politicians in Parliament on ethics, justice, peace and basic humanity. He has been villified by everyone for essentially trying to keep the socialist show on the road without the support he should have been given.
His views on vaccines are mild and I would agree ill-informed so that places him alongside billions of people. Although he is streaks ahead of most in being opposed to mandates and passports!
Listen to all the doctors on âourâ side and you will see they all have horror stories of covid damage and deaths, even though we should have expected many to have distinguished between dying of and dying with covid. They of course have the same stories re vaxxed deaths and side effects which are missing from âexpertsâ on the other side. JC is clearly still surrounded by a lot of ill informed people , just like the majority in the country. Despite this he should have been in power and there is no doubt in my mind if he had been we would be looking more like Sweden than Austria!
I expect we will have to agree to disagree on this one.
cheers
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Hi @Twirlip , sorry I didnât reply earlier as Iâm sure others are. JC is a bit of a Marmite subject at the end of the day, you either hate him or love him! 
cheers
Iâm not convinced he (and, donât forget, the people advising him) would have reacted so sanely. To me heâs a very decent guy who cares about a fairer world and certainly is head and shoulders above many on the political scene. He does however have some weaknesses (not standing up strongly against the absurd anti-semitic nonsense) and naiveties (or a case of being ill-informed? â eg on Syria, Russia).
On covid, unless I have missed it, he hasnât said an awful lot against lockdowns or loss of freedoms.
I suspect many things will have been done better than with Boris in charge (eg the insistence that only private providers can be used for testing, costing a fortune for people). However, he may well have locked down more (if he listened to those on the left) or followed the Cuban example (the first country to be injecting two year olds against Covid).
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Come on Twirl.
1 âThe dominant reactionâ is what you have determined from one post by me, one by @RobG, one by @KarenEliot and one by @RhisiartGwilym. The only post to even mention Corbyn was mine and Karen only mentioned the background to his image. So âdominant reactionâ seems to me to be an âover reactionâ?
2 No one in this thread has used the word bastard (not that I donât feel like using it sometimes in many different contexts)
3 I backed up my opinions with a second post in reply to Rhis. I provided clear evidence to show Corbynâs choice of words was at the very least euphamistically flipping poor. [late edit] You did nothing to address the evidence or provide an alternative view.
So your reaction is to attack the forum itself by inflamatory language. Iâm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are having a bad day. Iâm sure you can do better?
Incisive comment from Sir Michael Mouse in the TLN post:
"hi Scrabb, yes I was just noting that according to the MSM and sections of âthe leftâ Corbyn would now be a member of two far right factions. "
Link: The Lifeboat News: Re: Jeremy Corbyn states on @LBC why he opposes vaccine passports and mandatory vaccinations.
(viz. anti-Semetic and anti-vax)
This shows the turbulent waters Corbyn swims in.
It also shows why mild mannered co-operation is doomed to failure. You need strength to fight off the inevitable attacks, and you only get that from a base that is true to your convictions.
Another problem we have here is that very few politicians have any personal convictions on covid or vaccines and get their view from holding up a wet finger to the wind.
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I was never a lifeboat news subscriber, nor of the Media Lens forum, indeed i havenât taken part in any online forums for about ten years, until subscribing to this one in 2020.
Discussion can certainly be robust, and I suspect the middle ground lies fallow a lot of the time, but I canât recall ANY online community Iâve participated in being especially different, going back a long long time. It just seems to be how these things work. For example I was active in a Forteana forum for a long time and views always tended to polarise there too. Youâd maybe be surprised, for example, that use of the word âskepticâ, with a k, as opposed to âscepticâ, with a c, became a real source of division. The skeptics tended to be from the US (purely because itâs the preferred spelling there) and were outraged to be characterised as harder/less tolerant than the sceptics.
The hook that the forum hangs on is the propaganda model, thatâs inevitably going to stir up strong feelings because propaganda feels as though itâs something that is Done To Us. Some will believe themselves able to sniff it out better than others. Iâd probably claim that myself having spent time in apartheid South Africa, where the Nationalist Party were inveterate and unashamed liars. They also had their divisions: the âverkrampteâ (cramped in their thinking) versus the âverligteâ (more flexible). But I doubt any of us, me least of all, can really âstep outsideâ of culture/ideology. Symbols/language are never innocent.
âIsnât it an unbearable tragedy that the UK is now being governed by Boris Johnson, rather than Jeremy Corbyn, who would have reacted sanely to the pandemic, as well as to many other problems.â
Yes. Emphatically. (No misunderstanding @Twirlip) but I suspect he wouldâve been leant upon to conform to the grand narrative, one way or another. We will never know.
Corbyn was driven in to all sorts of contortions to try and ward off the accusations of âantisemiteâ and to appear electable, and I suspect that lots of people were deeply disappointed to see that happening. I can quite understand that seeming to resemble âspinelessâ behaviour, and I really wish he had stood his ground more firmly, but canât fault him for merely behaving as a compassionate human being. (Not a politicianâŚ?)
Sane and decent, as you said.
Despite some hot takes at times I think 5f doesnât do too badly.
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I found the Off-Guardian and others vs Dr. Peter McCullough and others thread quite heartening.
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I was criticising the forum, not personally attacking it.
If you reflect (and, if necessary, re-read), I think youâll see the difference.
You donât have to agree with my criticism.
(Also, I donât want to overemphasise it, which is one reason for my not replying right away.)
Nobody is perfect, and no group is perfect, either, whether it is online or off. But it is possible to do better or worse. Therefore (pace Rhis and John Michael Greer) it is possible, at least in principle, to progress.
The Lifeboat doesnât do very well as a discussion forum. (Take my word for it! And not only mine.) I thought we could do better here. I even think there is some evidence that we can.
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A large part of the so-called âalternate mediaâ is under a huge hack attack at the moment. Itâs very wearying if you run a web site.
But for fun, the cultural differences between the Brits and the French: the British government will usually make major announcements in the late afternoon, after the plebs have finished their day on the hamster wheel. The French government usually make major announcements at lunchtime, because the French do âlunchâ. In both instances itâs designed to reach the maximum number of people watching âthe psycho in the corner of the roomâ (the telly). Macron is due to make a major announcement later today. Bojo will follow suit on Saturday. If interested, watch the timings.
No prizes for guessing what they are going to say - over the last two years the Brits and French have closely co-operated over the covid psy-op. Donât take any notice of the stir about fishing rights.
Hereâs a wonderful rantâŚ
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âPeople ought to be vaccinatedâ. Itâs like saying people ought to be killed or maimed.
Hi @Rich , only if you know as a scientific certainty that vaccination will result in your death or serious injury , even âour expertsâ canât and donât say that. Thatâs why 70% of people still believe in vaccination, including JC.
cheers
Great guy, that Irishman! What a strange world indeed: as he says, only the DUP stands up for his and his kidsâ rights, but none of his nationalist MPs!