O Looney 's analysis

[SurferSoul]

One of the reasons for me to doubt the "plandemic" idea is that not all countries acted in the same way, as they should if this was really something organised worldwide.

In Portugal, the health authority told doctors to try whatever they thought could work, with no retaliations.

PS: less people means less taxes, so I don't think governments would like that.

I disagree, countries acted in lockstep, following more or less the same procedures entirely.
lockdowns, social distancing (why not physical distancing) masks, sanitation at stores, fines issued to those hiking alone in the countryside, etc… 

Also taxes barely pay the interest on national debt, many people if not the majority claim more in benefits and welfare than they pay into the state. As most manufacturing, call centres etc… have been outsourced abroad. In the west the baby boomer generation are all retired and not contributing anymore to the state. Not directly anyway and there is growing imbalance between the old and the young similar to Japan where the population is increasingly elderly. 

However I don’t think it was a population reduction attempt, if it was it failed miserably. More likely a huge psy-op and a massive wealth transfer. Governments created huge amounts of debt to pay everyone to be locked down. Pay for “free” vaccines for everyone.

[Creaky]

Imagine if they could free up all the superannuation,/401/retirement plan money that the baby boomers had invested in their retirement  
just a thought

[sahgwa]

Imagine if they could free up all the superannuation,/401/retirement plan money that the baby boomers had invested in their retirement  
just a thought

The technofascist EU is trying to do just that.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/...egic-inves

[Oldcarpy2]

The technofascist EU is trying to do just that.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/...egic-inves

Glad we left the EU!

[quintessentone]

The technofascist EU is trying to do just that.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/...egic-inves

They are not forcing anyone to give them their money for investment:

""The idea (of the SIU) is very much to encourage citizens to continue to invest in financial markets for their own future and to diversify, but also most likely to get a better return in the long term for their retirement," Sébastien de Brouwer, deputy CEO of the European Banking Federation, told Euronews."

We all want a better return on our investments, let's see how this goes before condemning it.

[sahgwa]

They are not forcing anyone to give them their money for investment:

""The idea (of the SIU) is very much to encourage citizens to continue to invest in financial markets for their own future and to diversify, but also most likely to get a better return in the long term for their retirement," Sébastien de Brouwer, deputy CEO of the European Banking Federation, told Euronews."

We all want a better return on our investments, let's see how this goes before condemning it.

Well they most likely will try to seize funds.  not cool.
To pay for their bureacratic controlfreak dreams. I mean combat racism and climate change. yeah. 

https://www.kitco.com/opinion/2025-03-26...-case-gold


But wrong thread.

[quintessentone]

Well they most likely will try to seize funds.  not cool.
To pay for their bureacratic controlfreak dreams. I mean combat racism and climate change. yeah. 

https://www.kitco.com/opinion/2025-03-26...-case-gold


But wrong thread.

They should be seizing Putin's money...there, problem solved.

[ArMaP]

I disagree, countries acted in lockstep, following more or less the same procedures entirely.
lockdowns, social distancing (why not physical distancing) masks, sanitation at stores, fines issued to those hiking alone in the countryside, etc… 

The lockdowns in Portugal did not as many types of businesses as in the US, for example.
Although social distance (physical distance would apply to everyone, including those living in the same home, not just social contacts) was suggested, nothing was enforced.
Masks were only mandatory in hospitals, retirement homes and public transports, not everywhere.
Sanitation provided by the stores was not mandatory.
And nobody was fined for hiking alone or whatever, only those that disobeyed direct orders from the authorities (and no, there were no orders forbidding people from walking alone, in fact many people started doing walks during the pandemic, because it was allowed).

Also taxes barely pay the interest on national debt, many people if not the majority claim more in benefits and welfare than they pay into the state.

A few people may be in that situation, but in Portugal, last year, the Social Security had a "profit" of more than 5000 million Euros, and of those, 3600 millions were paid (directly or indirectly) by immigrants, who received 600 millions in benefits.

However I don’t think it was a population reduction attempt, if it was it failed miserably. More likely a huge psy-op and a massive wealth transfer. Governments created huge amounts of debt to pay everyone to be locked down. Pay for “free” vaccines for everyone.

I'm sure many people saw this as a great way of diverting lots of money their way.

[SurferSoul]

 

It would be good if I could just reply directly, without having to quote you then delete everything you said. ( I’m sure you and others don’t want to see everything you’ve just wrote)

Anyway it was a different experience in the UK. A lived experienced, so I know what went down.
Similar policies to Portugal though and many other places. 
So what’s the national debt of Portugal then? What is it due to in general, in your opinion? 
I don’t know what the figures are off hand, but in the UK welfare in all its various forms must be quite a chunk. I’m guessing a quarter or there abouts at least. We also pay lots in indirect tax, a fortune in fact.

[rickymouse]

When you and I were kids, we got good basic fresh food because i doubt the parents could afford a fridge, it was wholesome. Behavior and immune response improve as well with the correct food; there have been trials in prisons to prove this. the food was not from flogged out pastures and the plants could get all the trace elements into them as well. When I was in the health services i remember the tutor saying to always look for the simplest cause of a disease first. This has to be basic nutrition needs, this is the pillar stone of a nation's health until this is fixed anything else is a waste of effort. 
fooling people to make the wrong choices is a growth industry, I am cynical now and can see that Darwinism will always take its course.

Well, when I was a kid, I am sixty nine, we had a fridge and a big eight foot long chest freezer.  We filled that freezer with venesin, smelt, locally caught fish, and occasionally we bought a cow or pig from a local farmer.  We made stews, and roasts and lots of good home cooked foods till the late sixties, at that point my mother went to work too and we started eating more junk food.  The thing about junk food those days, even the banquette tv dinners had real chicken in them...good flavorful chicken, not the crap like golden tasteless they sell these days.  Even store chickens tasted good, like the ahmish chickens they sell now, and they were like fifty nine cents a pound.   Milk came almost all from local farmers Bancroft or Jilbert local dairies...from cows that ate in pastures all day, only getting a little grain while they were being milked.  Beef in the stores tasted almost like the grass fed organic beef we now buy...

We buy half a head almost every year.  We used to buy a whole head of beef, and this was the first year in thirty some years we did not get a half because our supplier was a little short, so we just bought about a hundred twenty pounds of beef this year for about six hundred bucks.  They are getting rid of their organic certification next year, but will still will feed the cows the same way, they will be organic fed, and they will still will keep their certification for hundred percent grass fed/grass finished yet.  This move was to keep the cost down to their customers, it added about a hundred bucks a half head to be certified organic...but it will still be organic, just not certified.  This farmer is very honest and has integrety.  They are friends of all their customers and will not mislead them.

I usually buy about ten lake superior whitefish every year, enough for twenty meals for the wife and I.  And we usually buy Amish chickens or some of the tastier chickens for our use.  We presently have around ten whole chickens, about ten pounds of leg quarters, and two cut up chickens, plus maybe four packages of boneless skinless chicken in one freezer....trying to use our stock up a bit, we have three freezers full at the time, I have to start defrosting them one at a time so I need to get one empty to do that.  They are all eighteen to twenty square foot uprights, and none are self defrosting, I won't buy those auto defrosting freezers because their heat cycle makes freezer burn.  We also buy two flats of local strawberries and freeze whole berries and make about thirty six pints or half pints of jam for the family and the kids family.  Also I put up enough cherries from my brothers tree to make about six cherry pies, and we get local picked wild blueberries or I go out and pick them if I can get someone to come with me.  Enough for like six blueberry pies.  I know the strawberry farmer personally and he uses the least amount of pesticides he can, and never sprays pesticides on them once the berries blossoms form. 

I grew up on the farm we owned, we had a hundred twenty acres, lots of strawberries, and potatoes, plus a lot of other veggies...but no corn or watermelons, for some reason they did not grow well on our farm.  We stayed on the farm all summer, I would go fishing most days and get some brook trout for our lunch, and would often go with my dad to work and fish all day and come home with bass, crappies, big perch, and northern pike.  We ate a lot of fish....found out through my genetics that my paternal DNA which was mostly to do with metabolism...made me one point seven percent Inuit...basically like an Eskimo.  Smoked fish and salt fish were a big part of our diet, I guess that if you lack an anti-diuretic hormone you pee out all your salt.  It said in the gene app that I am one of the lucky ones, can eat as much salt as I want, but in society today, that makes you an outcast.  Also, if I drink over two cups of coffee, I pee out six.  Diuretics are listed as a no no on my medical records by a doctor who saw me deteriorate when she prescribed them, guess I flunked the urine test, that dark yellow pee is not normal.

We try to eat like eighty percent of our diet not highly processed, and that means I cook a lot making things from scratch, and also do a hell of a lot of dishes.  Our dishwasher is now a wine cabinet, we would wind up doing probably four loads a day in it, that is not rational.  It worked ok when we bought a lot of Schwam foods and ate forty percent highly processed garbage, but now it isn't worth loading and unloading all day long.  When I was working construction, I could sweat out a lot of the garbage food, but that is not the case anymore for a while. 

The food in the US seems to be junk these days, and I grew up on a farm, a couple of days and the veggies looked like crap....don't know what kind of junk they are treating the fresh produce with to keep them from spoiling, but if nothing can eat it, chances are that we cannot digest it either.