Off-Guardian – March 11, 2025
Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1.”Can anything stop bird flu?”
So asks the headline of this piece in New York magazine. A feverishly apocalyptic tale of a virus that could – and probably will – kill every human being in the United States.
The tone is urgent from the beginning. Hitting dates and names like the voiceover of a true crime documentary. It’s also tediously long so we won’t break down the whole thing.
The main takeaway should be this: Despite the winding down of bird flu in the wake of Trump Musk mania, it hasn’t gone away yet. In fact, articles like this make me begin to doubt my bird flu prediction from back in January.
The angle that looks to be shaping up, if this article is anything to go by, is that if there is a bird flu pandemic, it will be all Trump/Kennedy’s fault. A potentially wonderfully violent public debate will ensue, I’m sure, which is very much the point of almost all news media for the last few years.
All that said, the article made me laugh. There’s just something so darkly amusing about his Marvin-like defeatism. He’s typing his ten-thousand words out to a readership of people who don’t even realise they’re already dead.
There’s no comfort in where we are. Our government has spent the past year allowing H5N1 to spread throughout the country and the past two months dismantling some of the best defenses we have against pathogens of all sorts. We’re beleaguered and suspicious and seemingly incapable of collective action for the common good. The only thing keeping us safe, for now, is the virus itself.
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2. Goodbye freedom of religion
A New York court has found that Amish children are not exempt from the state’s “compulsory vaccinations for schoolchildren” law.
The St Vincent Times headlines:
Amish children in NY face compulsory vaccination as court crushes religious freedom
To be clear, these are Amish schools run by Amish people for Amish children. The children in question are not attending public schools. The Amish are not asking for special treatment, only to be left alone.
This is the entire purpose of the Constitution: to protect people who want to be left alone. A terrible precedent is being set.
3. “Food security requires alternative proteins, upscaling innovation is crucial”
That’s a headline from Euractive, warning that we need to change the way we eat because of climate this and sustainability that.
You know the drill. And you know what they mean by “alternative protein”.
My favourite line claims that “decreasing meat consumption could save the lives of 80 billion animals a year”, which seems to suggest that – should we stop eating pigs and cows and such – that farms are going to become like boring zoos where all the animals are just left alone to live their lives in peace.
Reality check – those animals won’t be saved, those animals will never exist. We’ll need the land they live on to grow soy paste and bug milk (see below).
It’s like arguing that contraception saves children’s lives because babies who were never born can’t die in car accidents.
It also discounts that 80 billion pigs/sheep/chickens/cows – by weight – is probably several tens of tillions of insects, none of which want to be eaten. But I guess those lives don’t count.
BONUS: Superfood of the week
Did you know that cockroach milk is four times as nutritious as cows’ milk?
It’s true. They did a study:
It’s the next superfood.
The hard part is finding the teeny tiny udders.
*
All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention whatever is about to go down in Serbia or how we should redefine making weapons as “ethical”.
There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.
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in the 1950s when i was first at work i used to ask all the old chaps about the war
to a man they all said had they known what they were fighting for they would not have bothered
Adolf Hitler took on the jews, once gone Germany had a utopian freedom the first time the world had ever seen full employment, they had security freedom and prosperity
Hitler offered to help us gain it too, Hitler loved the anglo saxon peoples that is germany and britain, what we did was shameful
that famous quote by i think david solomons stands out
” it was the triumph of the jew in 2 world wars to set the 2 anglo saxon peoples at each others throats “
just in from a friend
DOG THEFTS
Estimated 1,808 dogs stolen across the UK last year, police figures show
Story by Josie Clarke • 7h •
An estimated 1,808 dogs were stolen across the UK last year – with French bulldogs now the most likely breed to be taken, according to police figures.
Foreign gypsies are the main culprits, where they are considered a delicacy, the more valuable dogs are sold to unscrupulous back street breeders, dog hair is also used in the fashion industry
Some 51 French bulldogs were stolen over the 12 months, an increase of 38% on 2023, analysis of Freedom of Information requests to UK police forces by Direct Line Pet Insurance shows. French bulldogs can cost up to £5,000 when bought from a reputable breeder, meaning criminals can secure large sums of money for these animals by selling them on.
Rottweilers saw the highest rise in thefts – a 180% year-on-year increase, followed by Border collies, up from five stolen to 13, and Chihuahuas, rising from 14 thefts to 26.
In contrast, thefts of XL bullies have dropped by 49% following the ban on the breed introduced in England and Wales last February.
While the overall thefts figure is a 21% fall on 2023, only around one in five dogs (19%) were returned to their owners last year – one of the lowest levels in a decade of tracking by Direct Line Pet Insurance.
The Pet Abduction Act came into effect in May last year, making pet theft a criminal offence in England and Northern Ireland, punishable by up to five years in prison, or a heavy fine,
LOL…
This sort of pabulum sums up the post modern world and its zombie denizens perfectly..
…a Whirled that actually ‘charts’ the progress of despotism and autocracy and occasionally fibrous blood clots..yes ‘charts’ for its safely corralled consumers, tagged and farmed..who band together in face book groups and on telegram and slugstack… having just discovered the moonshots were fake..and letting the govern-mente inject you and your children on behalf of the billionaie class isn’t a good idea..
…the Alt-MEdia scribbling into the void from it’s re-purposed ‘social-housing’ maisonette in Croydon..on a macbook pro..with a glass of prosecco..vaping..
… it’s admins scouring the comments for aunty-shemitisms…
Yup..
UK FESTIVALS
many people stopped going abroad and now have staycations
UK festivals can be fun, if the weather is good
I work at festivals and have seen them go very woke and pro LGBT
These attract english people, they do not appeal to black or brown migrants
they have their own events
in order to get black or brown migrants to come the Eastern Arts Council
actually pays for festivals to put on these performers i have seen whole fields just walk off when rap music performers came on
perhaps the worst of the heterophobic woke festivals is green man wales
If you go to any festivals carry all your necessary items in your back pack at all times
as when the big performers are on the tent robbers will be out
those caught by security will be held police never come and they are just put outside the festival where they often climb walls to get back in
The best security i ever saw was by Hella Angels they hada tower built of scaffolding where i guy stood at the top where he had binocular and radio contact
and he could direct his men to the thieves
those caught were stripped naked and chained to the fence for the duration of the festival
after the first day there was no more thieving
WOMAN KILLS CAT
Police identified the suspect by only one name, Priya, and said she lived in Laluwala village in Uttar Pradesh. They said the woman and her friends filmed the act and shared the video on a social media platform.
Priya, who is reportedly in her early 30s, and her friends caught and killed the cat after it crossed their path in Moradabad’s Bhojpur area, police said on Tuesday. There is a widespread superstition in India that a cat passing one’s path brings bad luck. A group of people can be seen in the video beating the animal, dousing it in petrol, and setting it on fire.
My god i would not even wish that on Kier Starmer, well maybe i would
Police said Priya and an unspecified number of other suspected had been charged under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, which carries a penalty of up to three years in prison and a hefty fine for such acts of animal cruelty.
“We traced Priya after verifying the bike’s registration number seen in the video,” Moradabad divisional forest officer Suraj Kumar told The Times of India
India has reported many cases of animal cruelty that led to police action.
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Talking of boring zoos, my local zoo has one animal. A dog. It’s a Shih Tzu.
UK must consider conscription NOW to be ready for war with Russia, warn ex-Army chiefs
Story by Zahra Khaliq •
What about if the people dont want this war ?
Army chiefs have warned the UK Government “must” consider conscription immediately in preparation for a possible war with Vladimir Putin.
OK sign up the useless migrant hordes that are here
Ex-Nato officers said it’s time to “wake up” and ensure thousands more soldiers are trained up and ready to be assembled amid the impending Russian threat
what threat ? – after Donald Trump suggested the US would pull back its security commitment to Europe. European leaders are in a frantic race to shore up NATO defenses across the Baltics, fearing an imminent Vladimir Putin attack could be just a few years away, The Sun reports
Total bollox, the government wants a war ? let them fight it
dont ask the people.
Shocking news for the Amish. This is a blatant genocide of them. Do any search on the now heavily controlled search engines for ‘Amish children free of Autism and ADHD’ and you’ll get dozens of sites to the contrary. The simple truth is that vaccines CAUSE not only the above diseases, but ALL diseases. People are too stupid to want to accept that, even when covid figures prove that not only were covid deaths seasonal flu deaths, but the increase was as a result of the vaccination. 99.999% chance of being perfectly ok if you caught covid, but yet the moronic sheeple went off and got the vaccination. How stupid is that?
One wonders what it takes to awake the sleeping sheep that humanity is purposely being poisoned from every possible vector?
Rachel Reeves ‘will launch £24bn raid this year’
Story by Szu Ping Chan • 4h
Rachel Reeves will launch another £24bn raid this year as she grapples with low growth and pressure to spend less on the migrant invasion economists have warned.
Goldman Sachs said it expected the Chancellor to impose £10bn of spending cuts later this month after higher borrowing costs and a weak economy wiped out the £10bn headroom Mr
They are bleeding the farmers the old and the sick
ordinary people are visiting food banks in desperation
Reeves has to balance the books. Many folk are now saying the UK is full we cant take any more but Nutenyahu says take them or we wipe them out
France has already said sorry no more
The Tragic Travesty of COVID-19
https://grizzom.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-tragic-travesty-of-covid-19.html