Go to Part 1.

Corporate livestream

Hmm, so now these ‘two minutes of love’ at work will go on forever or something? After all, there is not enough pro-Ukraine propaganda in the media or on the Internet! – Lyoshka mumbled to himself agitated, staring at the screen of his laptop, from which a senior boss from the headquarters of their company, located somewhere in Oregon, was doing a corporate livestream. There was a picture of the Ukrainian flag in the background,

Dressed in a beige sweater, a man in his sixties with glasses, with the manners of a teacher, taught his class:

• On behalf of the senior leadership of the firm, I assure you that our company and all of us continue to stand on the side of the free people of democratic Ukraine, who are heroically resisting the unprovoked violence of the occupying forces of the criminal Russian regime and its tyrant Vladimir Putin, who are killing women and children. If one of our employees wants to make a donation to the fund for helping Ukrainian refugees or wants to donate to the Ukrainian army, the company will add a further 20% to these donations. Slava Ukraini! We stand for peace in Ukraine!

Lyoshka seethed inside: You stand for peace. … Of course, you stand for peace, fucking asshole! And you probably stood for fucking peace at your previous fucking job at fucking Lockheed Martin, and before that you were ‘lucky’ to work in Iraq for fucking Baker Hughes after 2003…. probably also protesting against war and demanding peace there, innit you fucking cunt?!’ RRRRRRRR!

Having calmed down a little, Lyoshka nevertheless relaxed and concluded – ‘Well, actually, thank God, at least I haven’t been fired (yet?) out of compassion for Ukraine for having the privilege of having a Russian passport. It’s good enough nowadays!’

Chat with mum

The clocks showed 5:30 pm, and most of Lyoha’s colleagues were already packing up their things and quietly heading home. Lyoha had no particular desire to continue working. Urgent correspondence had already been dealt with, client deliverables with today’s deadline have already been sent, and anything else could be picked up later in the evening from home on his phone. At the same time Lyoha also had no desire to immediately rush home. What for?

Let me call my mum, since I have nothing better to do! – Lyoha decided and went to the nearest free meeting room to ring her via FaceTime.

Right from the start of the conflict Lyoha began to call his parents almost every evening, partly out of curiosity, partly out of worry for them. Fortunately, no tragedies happened, although in the very first weeks it was an extremely worrying situation, which had since reached a certain plateau. Sadly for everyone, a temporary plateau, but there we go. Thank God, none of Lyoha’s acquaintances or relatives chose suicide, the apparent wave of which among the Muscovites of the middle, and especially the upper middle class, was reported with pleasure by the nasty Ukrainian media. So far, no one amongst his acquaintances had lost their jobs.

Lyoha went into the empty meeting room of one of his senior bosses, which overlooked the British Museum. Mom’s going to like the view!

He rang her number.

Silence.

Okay, she’s probably busy. I will call her again in 5 minutes. Staying in the meeting room, Lyoha began to scroll through his Instagram feed, an important tool he thought for measuring the moods in society.

Moscow photographers continued to take pictures of the capital’s skyscrapers under construction, and for the umpteenth time, the Moscow City district skyscrapers.

Moscow City

What is going to happen to them now? Are they going to have enough tenants? Could the Ukrainians blow them up? — Lyoha was thinking, looking at the photographs.

Female bloggers, after a short pause in late February and early March, came back to the platform with their usual posts of photos of their nails, hair, shoes, food porn, kittens and dogs, their barely covered bodies, and gatherings with their friends. Judging only by their Instagram posts, either their world had not changed, or they did not want to share the changes with the world. There was somehow a strange feeling of inconsistency — after all, there is actually a war going on (well, the so-called ‘SVO’ Spetsialnaya Voennaya Operatsia or Special Military Operation), but the usual peaceful life is still in place… Although Lyoha saw with his own eyes copies of British Vogue magazines from 1942–43, so it’s hardly something unusual; nonetheless it was still odd. That’s not how he expected a war to look like, but he felt that it’s not for him from the ‘depths’ to judge his countrymen for their desire to continue holding a peaceful and calm consumerist lifestyle.

On the other hand, the clones of these girls and boys from a neighbouring country from the end of February began to post a completely different set of photos and videos. No bullshit ‘SVO’, these guys are having a real war! The male bloggers took up arms, the girls took up the coordination of assistance for the front (some offline, but most online), and all of them together blazed with hatred for the “occupier orcs”. They had unequivocally been calling since that time for the murder and death of all Russians, their children and mothers on all monopoly social network platforms, who were very happy to host such content on their pages. And it was striking that people on both sides of the barricades were practically indistinguishable by the way they looked, their names, last names, language and slang. They lived in similar cities with similar houses, similar apartments and similar stairwells. This is probably how the gaping abysses between the former parts of one people are slowly (slowly though?) emerging?

But that’s all in the homelands. In the rest of the Instagram world, a normal life has continued: same pictures of happy girls in new outfits on the elegant streets of Paris, Rome and London. Same chique houses, lovely retro cars of the mid-20th century, delicious cakes and pastries, stunning interiors of European palaces and churches, brand new shiny skyscrapers in Melbourne, Guangzhou and Vancouver. The same posts about transphobia, homophobia, insufficient feminism and lack of diversity. Everything is exactly as it was before. One wonders – what is running through the minds of Muscovites or Kievans today when they look at these posts?

*   *   *

Finally Lyoha’s mum called him back.

• Lyoha: Priviet, Mom!
• Mum: Priviet, Lyoshenka — an elegant lady of around 50 years of age smiled at the camera (although she was in fact closer to 60). She drank coffee or tea from a miniature cup and smoked a miniature women’s cigarette, sitting on the balcony of a Stalinist house on Rostovskaya Embankment. Oh what a beautiful view! Wish I was there! — she continued.

Rostovskaya Embankment

• Lyoha: Oh, mum, you also have such a great view! I sat here on purpose—I knew that you would like to see a bit of London and the British Museum! And of course you will be here in some time, we’ll all be together with dad as well! And I really want to see you both…
• Mum: Because of this VILE EVIL FUCKING CUNT I have no idea when we can make it, if we even will be able to make it!—mum slipped as always on to the same topic … I curse him every day, so that he finally dies! Every morning I wake up and check the news hoping that this fucking piece of shit is dead! Oh, my god, Lyoshenka, you don’t know how strong, how much I wish that this cunt would die, so everything can become good and normal again!

Actually, it was frowned upon to use obscenities in the Timoshenko family; however, after 24 Feb 22, for the first few days it seemed that almost all Russians (including the most refined ones) were only capable of describing their twisted emotions by cursing. ‘Pizdec’ and ‘Ahuy’ [both meaning ‘fucking hell’, but one word derives from ‘cock’ and the other from ‘cunt’], Pizdec and Ahuy—that’s what most people kept saying to themselves and each other, and as times were quite stressful some morals have gotten lax.

• Lyoha: Mom, how can you not understand that, in fact, the interests of our family, and even our class, are now tied to Him and to Whether we like it or not…
• Mum: I want peace with “no annexations or indemnities,” and for everything to be as it was before!
• Lyoha: Mom, well, as you know that just as back then in 1918 there was no peace, and there were annexations and indemnities. The best we can aim for with such ‘peace’ … could very well be a new Treaty of Versailles.
• Mum: Good enough for me! I don’t want to go back to the Soviet Union! I LIVED THERE! You just can’t imagine how terrible and miserable it was there … — Lyoha’s mum sighed and rolled her eyes.
• Lyoha: Well, after all, it’s not really going to be the new Soviet Union …
• Mum: Haha! Indeed! During these 30 years we have forgotten how to produce almost anything. Today we don’t have a self-sufficient industry and especially mechanical engineering—no planes, no trains … all is now made by Siemens and most of our planes are in lease. Hell, I’m not even sure we know how to produce menstrual pads…
• Lyoha: Life will force us to build autarchy… — Lyoha tried to argue, feeling slightly unsure of his argument….
• Mum: You know, this is worse than the Soviet Union, it’s just bloody SOVOK [derogatory name for the Soviet Union with the undermeaning of something rundown and backwarded]! Savings are frozen, Echo Moskvy [The main (((Russian liberal and pro-western))) media platform since 1991—up until the 2010s a radio station, since then a multimedia platform; somewhat comparable to The Guardian] is closed. Prison sentences of 15 years have now been introduced for “anti-state propaganda,” they are talking about re-introducing death penalty for “treason,” people are imprisoned for anti-war rallies and you no longer can easily exchange foreign currency. At least whoever may be trying to escape from the country, thank God, are still being allowed to leave…

The topics and even the phrases of the conversations have not changed for several weeks, just like a broken record, but this did not bother both interlocutors, each of whom received a certain buzz when having such a dialogue. They probably just wanted to get it out of their system and receive some temporary relief from such a discussion.

• Lyoha: Mom, it’s just a country … during war time. That’s all!
• Mum: Oh, thanks Lyosha! So easy for you to say that! That’s horrible! You can’t imagine what it’s like!

Lyoshka, of course, himself agreed that he did not know “what a nightmare it is,” but on the other hand, he was well aware from phone calls with his parents about what they had been doing for the past few weeks. How and with whom and what restaurants they attended together in Moscow, who they saw and which neighbours they hosted as guests at their dacha in Novaya Riga [a prestigious outer Moscow suburb with a bunch of gated communities]. Which brand of foreign wine and champagne they drank there, what premieres they recently attended in theaters and how they “had been forced to” spend their spring vacation in picturesque Karelia [the northern region of Russia next to Finland] instead of London.

• Lyoha: I can’t imagine that, but still…it’s not the end of the world…yet. Everything seems to be fine so far. Most of the Russian people have it far worse…but hold a political view different from yours—Lyoha said in a defensive tone.
• Mum: Fuck the Russian people, this abominable scum! I don’t give a fuck, seriously! If they got used to living in drab colorless poverty forever, then this is not my problem! I don’t want to live like that!—his mother almost hissed with sincere hatred and contempt. And …YOU TELL ME LYOSHENKA, if you are here for the Russian people, why are you supporting the BOMBING OF KIEV AND KHARKOV, huh? My cousin Lena lives in Kiev, with her Seryozha and Bogdanchik, if you forgot? Didn’t you see him in London in 2018? You seemed to have had a good time with him then? Do you support the shelling of their city, huh? Do you think it would be great if their apartment on Khreschatyk [Kiev’s Champs Elysees or London’s Oxford Street] will end up demolished? That’s all for the ‘Russki Mir’ [Russian World—one of the propaganda terms of the Russian side], RIGHT?
• Lyoha: Mom, you should have seen what Bogdanchik has been writing on social media about Russia and Russians even before these events … Yes, Kiev and Kharkov used to be pro-Russian cities, but now they hate us. And yes, they do it in Russian, I can’t argue with that. And if you care so much about ordinary people, I didn’t hear words of indignation from you during the previous 8 years about the Donbass, when they were bombed. I also never heard any condemnation from Aunty Lena or you as well about Odessa [2nd May 2014, where 50+ pro-Russian Ukrainian citizens were burnt alive by the Ukrainian nationalists].
• Mum: I don’t give a shit about Donbass, Donetsk, Lugansk and Odessa! Have you been there at least once, unlike Kiev? Have I been working these thirty years in order to retire without a penny in a fucking gigantic North Korea because of some fucking Donbass? To hell with Donbass!!
• Lyoha: Mom, I’m afraid that the Ukrainians still won’t appreciate your love for them, and I think that Aunt Lena, Serezha and Bogdanchik curse us all together, and in the case of a defeat we will face a massacre! Have you seen the videos of how our boys are being tortured there?
• Mum: It’s their fucking problem that they ended up there! Why the hell were they on a mission in another country? If the Ukrainians come here, we will meet them with your father with bread and salt!

The conversation, as always, was coming to a dead end. Lyoha was too disgusted to continue the conversation (and let’s be frank, his mother for her own reasons was likely disgusted as well). He wanted to share a story gleaned from the recently read memoirs of Berlin Germans in 1945 about how one Berlin communist and his Jewish wife were excitedly waiting for the arrival of the liberation Red Army, and as a result, his stomach was torn open and she was raped by a whole crowd and killed without any appreciation for their “bread and salt,” but at the last moment Lyoha decided to keep it to himself.

But the conversation had to be continued and steered in a more constructive direction. It was mum. Lovely mum, who, like dad, had provided him with a wonderful life. They had sent Lyoha to England to study (and also later his sister), then helped them both with an apartment. It’s actually hard to find an area of his life where they didn’t help with something… They more than fulfilled a plan for “building communism” in the Timoshenko family [meaning building a good life — it’s a Soviet expression that in most cases is used sarcastically, as it was used by Soviet leaders to make promises that were never delivered]. And although his mother was hissing and now saying nasty things about her own people, to love thy neighbour (everyone understands who’s the neighbor in their own way, and for Lyoha that was the Russian people), Lyoshka was taught by his parents’ example—their own gentle nature and homey warmth.

You have no right to utter a word, or even be offended or annoyed, Lyoha!—Lyoha’s inner voice told him and then added—You must endure!

Tekstilshiki in winter, Moscow, 2000s or 2010s.

Well, deny it or not, you are a comprador bourgeoisie and you know it, Lyoha. It is unpleasant to admit that you belong to this class of parasites, or rather servants of real parasites, but on the flipside, it was quite lucky to have a relatively comfortable life in Russia in that historical period. It would be foolish to refuse it, especially since his parents were not really some kind of bloodsucking monsters. Mum built her career in boutique private banks, dad made it in public relations for multinationals. All their life they have always paid their taxes, never received any bribes and if they paid any, they were for speeding tickets back in the 1990s. They have always done their jobs in accordance with the law. If the law was dodgy at some point, well, it’s not the parents who made them, and they were certainly not the rebels to question or fight against them. Yes, from early childhood, Lyoshka recalls, every morning began with the sounds of Echo Moskvy in the kitchen, but there was never any self-hate at home, no one repented for their own Russianness. The word ‘bydlo’ [White trash] was rarely used at home to describe others and no one at home told Lyoha not to associate with someone because they were of a lower social class.

Lyoshka did not grow up as a typical upper-middle-class liberal with a sense of entitlement. In the 1990s, although his parents voted for Yeltsin, like everyone else at that time, they still despised him and his entire gang. All of the Timoshenko family often stayed at the shabby dacha [Russian summerhouse, and to have one in family ownership at the end of Soviet Era was quite common even among working classes] with his grandparents. They helped grow potatoes, berries and vegetables in the garden, and later in the year to pickle the vegetables for the winter. Then towards the end of the 1990s when most of the economic horrors had passed, trips to the dacha were replaced with trips to Turkey in the summer, and at the same time his grandparents replaced their garden with flowers or lawns. It was much more exciting to go to a large supermarket with choice where everything was cheap, just as it was much more fun to go to an “all inclusive” resort for a couple of weeks than to the native dacha. The whole family really liked it there—these were the first trips abroad for everyone in the family. The Iron Curtain was indeed very real up until 1992.

Dachas

At the very beginning of the 2000s, like everyone else, the entire family was inspired by the handsome and sharp young president, and the careers and lives of both his parents were really boosted then compared to the 1990s. Only by the end of that decade (after Lyoha graduated from secondary school) did his parents move to the prestigious Stalinist housing complex at Rostovskaya Embankment from the drab proletarian (even in the name!) Tekstilshiki (literally Textile Workers’ in Russian) district. When Lyoshka came to visit his parents at their new place, while still living in Moscow, he felt a little bit out of place. He continued to think of himself as a “man of the people,” although, of course, it was quite laughable for him to think so.

Still, none of the Timoshenko family uttered at home very fashionable phrases of that era amongst (((refined Russians))) such as “I need to go on vacation (abroad) where there are no other Russians.” It would even have sounded out of place. Why would you hate yourself for what you are?

His mum continued to complain about her life, and Lyoha remembered a recent similar conversation with a classmate from Moscow State University. He also had a wonderful view from his apartment which Lyoha admired when they had their regular video calls. He was sitting on his balcony in a high-rise apartment in a Stalin’s skyscraper on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment, which he inherited from his grandfather, a Soviet general, a World War II veteran.

That friend, like Lyoha, or even to a greater extent Lyoha’s parents, belonged to the same stratum—the middle layer of the Moscow upper middle class, although this ‘tovarish’ [literally comrade in Russian] always claimed that he’s also a man of the “people.” In fact, specifically he meant the “Soviet people” (but not Russian!), for he considered himself “red-brown.” He was proud that his brother had even participated in those events [September/October 1993 patriotic uprising against (((the Yeltsin’s regime))) in Moscow that was in the end put down by pro-government tanks].

However, as Marx said that one’s social being determines one’s consciousness, during a recent call with this (((Felix))) (even his name was a bit Soviet!) … this comrade very rudely denounced the war. He called Putin a “Nazi who went completely bonkers,” lamented the loss of his refined lifestyle, and just like Lyoha’s mother, he easily dismissed his remarks about the Ukrainian tortures of the Russian soldiers, arguing that they supposedly knew how they would end up after crossing the other state’s border. And at that point Lyoha, just like now, also felt physically disgusted and angry, but he did not dare to argue. Though he was capable of doing so, at the end of the day, talk is cheap at this stage. What moral right had he to lecture as a person from well-fed and calm London where there is no war (neither real nor economic)? Especially to lecture his close friends or his family. Who knows what Lyoha himself would say, if he were living in Moscow today? Endure!—said an inner voice, To remain silent in front of a friend costs nothing to you. However deep inside Lyoha could not keep himself from chuckling that Felix, a communist-rentier with two apartments on the Garden Ring (a prestigious ring street that goes around central Moscow) and other inherited wealth from his communist-party functionary ancestors, who used to belittle pre-Revolution Russian bourgeoisie and nobleman for being so attached to their wealth and possessions, got extremely worried when his wealth and possessions became at risk, and now he himself may become a victim of a new Russian revolution and the enraged Russian volk.

• Mum: How is Ollie?—she found a compromise and calm topic.
• Lyoha: He’s a sweet and magical gnome as always. Today I’m seeing them all and I bought a bear doll for my beloved nephew. Let me show you!

He smiled with pleasure, going back to the open space in the office for his bag.

Go to Part 3.

Go to Part 1.

SAMMY LEE AND LES GIRLS

Sammy Lee (born Samuel Levi in Canada in 1912) was the other half of the subversive nightclub and sex business that gained prominence at Kings Cross during the early 1960s. Lee came to Australia in 1937 as part of a touring jazz band, and had prior experience with clubs in Canada. He began with The Roosevelt and Sammy Lee’s Theatre Restaurant, both on Oxford Street, where the illegal liquor sales and late bar hours saw him (as well as Saffron) dragged in front of the Liquor Royal Commission in 1954. Lee’s nightclub and restaurant portfolio grew to operate other popular venues during the era, such as the Latin Quarter (a favourite haunt of Sydney gangsters), Club Flamingo and the strip club Pigalle, but undoubtably his most enduring venue was the Carousel Club and its celebrated revue Les Girls, located in the heart of Kings Cross at 32 Darlinghurst Road.

The Carousel Club was originally opened in 1963, jointly by Lee Gordon, Reg Boom and Sammy Lee, Gordon’s last major venture before his death. The venue began exhibiting drag queens under the title Jewel Box Revue, a name Gordon likely took from a Miami-based drag revue that operated in Florida during the 1950s.[1] Gordon had exhibited the French transsexual performer “Coccinelle” at one of his Kings Cross venues in 1959, and sneaking men into the line-up had become an in-joke at strip clubs, but this was the first proper drag queen venue in Australia, specifically dedicated to openly cultivating this form of homosexual gender-bending “art.” Operating in a building owned as you would expect by Saffron, Lee took over sole management of the venue in 1964, remaining until his death in 1975. The drag queen revue changed its name to a performance name which ended up being more identifiable than the name of the club itself. This troupe included the performer “Carlotta” (Richard Byron), who became Australia’s most famous drag performer and transsexual media personality while at the venue, and led the revue for nearly 20 years. Lee brought Les Girls to Melbourne in 1971, premiering at the Ritz Hotel in St Kilda, allegedly the first (official) drag performance to take place in the city, which included a performance of Hava Nagila by drag queen “Cinnamon Brown.”[2]

LEE GORDON TAKES ON WHITE AUSTRALIA

Up until the 1950s, the music industry in Australia was a quaint affair and most historians use the word “parochial” as a description of the scene at the time. Live entertainment and music promotion were still dominated by variety-entertainment companies Tivoli and J.C Williamson, and foreign musicians rarely made it to Australia, as promoters had to contend with the “tyranny of distance” that marked the country for its first 160 years.[3] The sheer remoteness of Australia made bringing out foreign acts an expensive and time-consuming affair, in particular for the most popular performers, who balked at the 22-day boat trip. As such, the country managed to keep the worst excesses of the jazz age and the ensuing eroticism far from its shores. To listen to famous jazz musicians, Australians had to settle for imported gramophone records produced by the Jews at Tin Pan Alley. In the aftermath of a disastrous first Australian tour by a Black jazz troupe in 1928, Australia even established a de-facto color ban on Black jazz performers entering the country.

The tour, promoted as “Sonny Clay’s Colored Idea” by J. C. Williamson,[4] was marred by scandal after members of the band had their Melbourne apartment raided by police, who found five Australian women amongst a group of revellers. The band had successfully toured Sydney (residing in apartments in Kings Cross[5]) but came under intense scrutiny by the Commonwealth Investigation Branch[6] and local police. There was no law against women simply drinking while being in the presence of a man, colored or not, so the women were let off by a judge due to a lack of evidence that anything untoward occurred. O’Connell alleges that two of the women were in fact police informants, working as part of an entrapment plot designed to get the Sonny Clay troupe deported.[7] Nevertheless, the incident was turned into a major miscegenation scandal in the press and the government acted swiftly to deport the band, while introducing new criteria on entrance applications for negro performers. Alongside being “of general good character,” they also had to demonstrate an ability to “raise the local standard”—a control designed to exclude jazz music, which degraded the local character.[8] How exactly these criteria came to be abandoned by 1954 is unclear; in all likelihood, the evolution of jazz music diminished the overtly racial nature of genre, and the criteria had fallen by the wayside. But what is clear is that a Jew saw an opening and soon made it his own. Enter Lee Gordon.

Brought on by the jet age and the ever-increasing dominance of American music, Lee Gordon was the first to demonstrate that the tyranny of distance was broken, and he became the pioneer in bringing leading American performers to Australia. Born Leon Lazar Gevorshner in 1923, Gordon was a former sales merchant and bookings manager at the Tropicana nightclub in Cuba. He moved to Australia in 1953 to pursue concert promotion at the suggestion of friend and fellow concert promoter Arthur Schurgin, who remained Gordon’s business partner and American contact.[9] Once settled, Gordon set up an office at the periphery of Kings Cross (on Bayswater Road), close to the stadium where he would soon be exhibiting the Sydney leg of his tours.

Under the name Big Show tours, these star-studded performances combined multiple artists as a package event, which at the time was more economical than running individual tours for each artist. The list of names Gordon brought to Australia is a who’s-who of the most prominent performers at the time, covering every popular genre, but Jazz and Rock & Roll were the main fare. Gordon didn’t just bring his shows for a whirlwind Sydney/Melbourne trip, he ran lengthy country-wide tours that brought performers to even the smaller cities like Newcastle and Hobart. With his Big Show tours, Gordon had also broken the de-facto ban on bringing Black jazz musicians to Australia that had held since the Sonny Clay incident. His first tour in July 1954, six months after the Saperstein brothers brought the all-Black basketball troupe the Harlem Globetrotters to Australia, featured Black singer Ella Fitzgerald in a racially integrated jazz line-up alongside Jewish artists Buddy Rich and Artie Shaw (Arshawsky), all paid on a percentage basis and not a fixed fee.[10]

Black performers imported by Gordon (as well as Martin and Brodziak) just kept on coming during the 1950s—names like Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr, Eartha Kitt, Nat King Cole, Winifred Atwell and Harry Belafonte—and it has not subsided ever since. The impact of these racially integrated tours on racial sensibilities, through mass exposure to the racial “other” that had so perturbed earlier generations,[11] cannot be underestimated. With every new successful Black musician brought into the country by Jews, the White Australia Policy was looking more and more out of date. Fitzgerald’s arrival in Australia was even accompanied by teary headlines that she had been racially discriminated against by Pan-Am Airlines. Perhaps, people were starting to think, we Australians were being too harsh in our racial policy and there is no real harm in letting some in; did Australia really need protection from people like Ella Fitzgerald?

Gordon shifted into the nightclub scene in the early 1960s and his spendthrift ways and financial woes eventually led him to collaborate with cash-rich Abe Saffron. In need of a successful tour, Gordon invited Saffron along on a trip to Las Vegas in 1959 to secure another Frank Sinatra tour,[12] where it is likely Saffron made (or strengthened) his connection to the Jewish mob. Among Gordon’s last endeavours was the notorious Sydney tour of Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce (Leonard Schneider) in 1962. Bruce spent much of his fortnight in Sydney lurking around Kings Cross and searching for heroin, but Gordon made the mistake of booking Bruce at a genteel venue, the Aaron’s Exchange Hotel in the city, instead of a seedier Kings Cross location, as would have more suited his “sick comedy” style. Bruce became agitated by hecklers and headlines the next day carried the outrage of the performance:

SICK JOKE MADE AUDIENCE ILL; SICK COMIC’S SEX JOKES, WOMEN DISGUSTED; DISGUSTED BY ‘SICK’ JOKES, 4 WOMEN WALK OUT.[13]

Bruce’s further performances were all cancelled, another disaster for Gordon who had yet again pegged much of his financial stability on a successful tour. Gordon fled to London in 1963 after being arrested for drug possession and he was found dead in a hotel room shortly thereafter. Observing the Lenny Bruce scandal from afar—and brimming with scorn at how he had been treated—were three university students, Messrs. Neville, Walsh and Sharp, the future founders of the far-left OZ magazine which I discussed previously.

BRODZIAK Vs. MILLER

There are any number of events that can be pointed to as the definitive arrival of the sexual revolution in Australia. Some would say the approval of the birth control pill Anovlar in 1961, others the founding of Saffron’s strip clubs. Another contender would surely be the arrival of the Beatles on a wet and windy Sydney morning in July 1964, a catalytic event of the sexual revolution that flared the passions of Australian youth like no other before it. This was the cultural event of the decade, with wall-to-wall media coverage, and people lined up around the country to catch even a glimpse of the Beatles in a passing car or on a hotel balcony in Kings Cross. Sensible society just didn’t know what to make of the young women screaming their heads off in ecstasy at Beatles concerts, something that had not been encountered before in the country on this scale.  Those who attempted to warn Australia about the Beatles, their sexual lyrics, and the impact their style had on the young and on notions of parental authority, were exposed by the massive crowds and media frenzy as out of touch moral busybodies who no longer had a monopoly over moral discourse.

The man responsible for the tour was music promoter Kenneth Leo Brodziak, who had fortuitously (and cheaply) booked an Australian tour of the Beatles with manager Brian Epstein through his London agent (Cyril Berlin), as part of a talent scouting trip in July 1963. This was well before their explosion in popularity in the UK and their subsequent appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in the US. Born in Sydney in 1913 to an established Jewish family, Brodziak, alongside Harry M. Miller, followed in the wake of Lee Gordon’s ground-breaking tours as the next generation of Jewish promoters importing the biggest foreign entertainment acts to Australia.

Brodziak in 1994, showcasing his original Beatles contract (Rennie Ellis—State Library of Victoria)

Brozdiak founded Aztec Productions in 1946 which became a successful theater company, often working with David Martin at the Tivoli. His early productions skirted the line of what was acceptable under obscenity law at the time, often all-male performances which indulged his homosexual tendencies, and his first self-written play, Desire Brings Welcome, was banned in 1937 by the NSW government.[14] Other Aztec theatrical productions such as Rusty Bugles and The Square Ring (first performed in 1948 and 1953 respectively) came under scrutiny for obscenity, and the company held the Australian performance rights to the works of controversial playwright Lillian Hellman. By the late 1950s, Aztec was bringing in musical acts from Britain and America as well, including many Black artists, taking over from Gordon’s headlining tours which had fallen out of success.

At the time, Brodziak’s main commercial rival was the young Harry Maurice Miller, the founder of Pan-Pacific Promotions.[15] Their rivalry during the mid-1960s intensified into a tit-for-tat music promotion battle, each attempting to outdo the other. In 1964, Miller toured a group of Liverpool artists as the “Liverpool Sound” to take the wind out Brodziak’s Beatles tour. Brodziak responded with an exclusive stadium partnership deal that locked out Miller from the biggest Australian concert venues, and Miller countered with a tour of the Rolling Stones, held at a refurbished pavilion in the Sydney Showgrounds.[16]  Miller was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1943 to a Jewish rag-trader who migrated from London in the 1920s.[17] Miller made Sydney, specifically Kings Cross, his base of operations from 1964 and used his prior New Zealand connections to also arrange for many New Zealand tours of his contracted acts.

Brodziak and Miller soon put their differences aside and were collaborating on theater and music promotions. The pair, now in a partnership, were behind the Australian premieres of all the largest obscene and blasphemous theatrical productions and musicals (many written and first directed by Jews) that were coming to Australia at the time. Such is their reputation now as theatrical trailblazers of the cultural and sexual revolution, that even people who have never stepped foot in a theatre in their life would recognise some of the names: Hair, The Boys in the Band, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Godspell, and A Chorus Line.

Their joint production of The Boys in the Band in 1968 precipitated another major obscenity trial in Australia in the lead up to the Portnoy’s Complaint victory. During the Melbourne performance leg, three of the actors were successfully charged with obscenity, much to the outcry of the press. It was a sign of the times that the police could no longer ban a production even with blatant homosexual themes, and had to resort to targeting utterances of the word “f*ck” to record any sort of conviction.[18]

For the first Australian production of Hair in 1969, Miller and Brodziak set up the Minerva Theatre in Kings Cross for a two-year performance stint. The challenge was, how to get the scene of full nudity (which became the first in a theatrical production in the country) past the government censors in the form of Sir Eric Willis. Miller’s solution was to reduce the length of the scene and adjust the lighting of the stage to be as dim as possible[19], and he deliberately invited Willis to the afterparty of the preview, where he was bombarded with people praising him for allowing the performance. In the end, Miller got the result he wanted and Willis backed down:

I told them it was not my kind of show. That it denigrated all of the basic standards of life that we had been reared to believe were correct … the nude scene in my opinion was completely unnecessary … but it was so brief that, you know, I just thought it was harmless.[20]

Both Miller and Brodziak continued their careers into the 1990s, by then eclipsed by the next generation of Jewish promoters in Australia—Michael Gudinski and Michael Coppel. 

DEATH ON THE CROSS

The progression to violence, anarchy and death, unleashed by sexual passions, is the seemingly inevitable result of sexual liberation, one that has played out throughout history. The sexual license of the French Revolution, spurred on by pornographic pamphlets and the Marquis de Sade, gave way to the Terror, Jewish perversion in Weimar Germany stoked the inferno of communist and fascist violence in the 1930s, and the ’68 generation mutated into terrorist groups like the Weather Underground and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. The sexual liberation that Saffron and other Jews had help unleash at Kings Cross was no different. By the latter half of the 1980s, the Cross had devolved into a drug-infested horror show, beset by violence and gang warfare, and the homosexuals that had made the Cross their spiritual home were dying by the dozens of AIDS—a far cry from the once glitzy and glamourous Cross. By 1989, the situation had degenerated to such an extent, that some members of the NSW government even privately invited Abe Saffron, about to be released from prison, to re-take his throne as “King of the Cross” from the Lebanese criminals that had taken over and help the police clean up the mess that it had become.[21] That it was Jews like Saffron who had caused this mess in the first place was apparently not understood.

In Parts I and II of this series, this writer explored the important Jewish role in the downfall of obscenity laws in Australia in 1972, through the vehicle of Portnoy’s Complaint. At the time, Justice Ewen Ross upheld the ban on the book in Victoria, but in his judgement, he couldn’t help but admit that there was a ”new frankness” in the community when it came to matters of sex that made his decision a more controversial one.[22] This essay has outlined strong contenders for the origins of this new frankness amongst Australians—ones that can be strongly attributed to Jews. Centred around Kings Cross, it was the venues of Saffron and Lee, the Jazz and Beat music imported by Gordon and Brodziak, and the performances staged by Miller, that had done more than their fair share in grooming wider Australian culture prior to 1972 for the downfall of obscenity and the arrival of sexual modernity.

The death of Kings Cross finally came in February 2014, when the state government, tired of the amount of money and energy they were forced to invest into the precinct to stop the constant alcohol abuse and deaths from drunken brawls, implemented new “lockout laws” under the Liquor Act. These regulations, which applied selectively to Sydney’s nightlife precincts, barred patrons from entering venues after 1:30 am and from purchasing alcohol after 3 am. Opponents were quick to blame the laws for the shuttered strip clubs and the for-lease signs cropping up all along Darlinghurst Road; however, gentrification had already begun to take hold prior to this. Despite evidence that the laws had successfully reduced alcohol-fuelled deaths, the people of Sydney spent the next six years listening to wailing from progressives about the return of temperance and the death of their icon.

True to form as useless conservatives who fail to conserve anything—let alone even try to uphold basic moral standards, the NSW Liberal government gave in to public pressure and rescinded the laws in 2021. Hopes are high that the Cross can return as Australia’s premier “space for transgression,” but it almost doesn’t matter, Australia doesn’t need places like Kings Cross anymore:

The cruel reality is that Kings Cross has served its purpose. For decades it was the vanguard of modernism, sexual mores, design and nightlife and an escape from a parochial and puritan Australia. But now all that has changed.[23]

In an era where internet pornography is in every household, where “pride week” is celebrated at places of employment, and where drag queens read to children at local libraries,[24] it no longer has any currency in shocking the country and there is little left for Jews to transgress. In a way, every suburb in Australia has now become Kings Cross.

[1] Founded by “Danny Brown” and “Doc Benner.” Their background is unclear, but their slightly ethnic appearance and all too generic stage-like names hint at a Jewish heritage.

[2] H. Jay 1971, ‘BOY THESE LES GIRLS!’. Australian Jewish News, Friday 13 July, p.8.

[3] The phrase was popularised by historian Geoffrey Blainey in his book The Tyranny of Distance (1966), which argued that remoteness had shaped the development of Australia as a country.

[4] Organiser Harry Muller of J.C. Williamsons even had to lie on their visa applications to get the band into the country – D. O’Connell 2021, Harlem Nights: The Secret History of Australia’s Jazz Age, Melbourne University Press, Australia, p.65.

[5] Ibid., p.84.

[6] The Australian equivalent of the American FBI at the time.

[7] O’Connell, Op. Cit., p.184.

[8] Ibid., p.243.

[9] F. Van Straten 2007, ‘Lee Gordon – Hall of Fame’, Live Performance Australia, retrieved from: https://liveperformance.com.au/hof-profile/lee-gordon-1923-1963/.

[10] The Sun-Herald 1954, ‘Sydney Filmgoers to See STARS In The Flesh’, Sunday 11 July, p.44.

[11] The desire to avoid the emergence of a “colored problem” like that in America was a crucial impetus to the creation of the White Australia Policy.

[12] Saffron, Op. Cit., p.104.

[13] D. Kringas 2012, ‘Lenny Bruce’s Visit to Sydney 1961’, Dictionary of Sydney, retrieved from https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/lenny_bruces_visit_to_sydney_1962

[14] Sydney Morning Herald 1937, Ban on Play, Thursday 11 February, p.10.

[15] Co-founded by Dennis Wong of Chequers nightclub.

[16] D. Kimball, ‘Kenn Brodziak’, Milesago: Australasian Music and Popular Culture 1964-1975, retrieved from http://www.milesago.com/industry/brodziak.htm

[17] The name ‘Miller’ is likely an anglicized version of an eastern European Jewish name. Miller himself doesn’t give it away in his autobiography, or perhaps he simply doesn’t know either: H. M. Miller & P. Holder 2018, Harry M Miller- Confessions of a not-so-secret agent, 2^nd edition, Hachette, Australia.

[18] P. Mullins 2019, The Trials of Portnoy, Scribe Publications, Australia, p.124.

[19] Miller & Holder, Op. Cit., p.82.

[20] D. Kimball, ‘Hair’, Milesago: Australasian Music and Popular Culture 1964-1975, retrieved from http://www.milesago.com/Stage/hair.htm

[21] Saffron, Op. Cit., p.242.

[22] Mullins, Op. Cit., p.147.

[23] Nowra, Op. Cit., p.454.

[24] Drag Queen Story Hour is now a thing in Australia as well.

On August 19^th, in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), among the most shocking statements ever made by any government agency in  US history was issued by the CDC. In its “Summary of Guidance for Minimizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Individual Persons, Communities, and Health Care Systems — United States, August (19) 2022,” the CDC stated:

CDC’s COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur, though they are generally mild, and persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection.

Stating at this point that the recommendations for vaccinated and unvaccinated people are the same may be among the most shocking statement ever made in US history, given the absolute frenzy the CDC made of the urgency to get vaccinated over the last year and a half. It started inflicting covid vaccines on the elderly and “immune compromised,” then urged vaccines for pregnant “people,” adolescents, and eventually even children as young as five.

Lives and careers and health and families were destroyed when unvaccinated people were expelled from their jobs, prevented from entering public places, refused the right to travel, excluded from family gatherings, demonized as unpatriotic “anti-vaxxers,” and other tyrannies over their lives. But now the CDC is saying the vaccinated and unvaccinated are to be treated the same!

Why? The CDC gives 2 reasons: we are seeing “breakthrough” cases, essentially meaning the vaccines do not work to prevent infection—which the CDC has indirectly already said whenever it claims the vaccines only reduce symptoms—and that unvaccinated people who have had covid already and recovered have “some degree” of natural immunity.

“Breakthrough Cases”
This is astonishing. Let us see the first reason again:

“breakthrough infections occur, though they are generally mild…”

Under section “Vaccine Breakthrough Infections,” CDC says:

COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease, hospitalization, and death. However, since vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing infection, some people who are up to date with the recommended vaccines will still get COVID-19. This is called a breakthrough infection. When people who are vaccinated develop symptoms of COVID-19, they tend to experience less severe symptoms than people who are unvaccinated.

This clearly claims that vaccinated and unvaccinated people experience different symptoms. But now the CDC is admitting that they have no different recommendations for vaccinated people than unvaccinated because unvaxxed people may have recovered and now have natural immunity. Vaccinated and unvaccinated people are considered the same now, according to the CDC. And one reason is, breakthrough cases!

The entire public health and governmental media apparatus has recently been featuring “Breakthrough Cases” in our faces, with such prominent examples as (supposedly) fully boosted Biden and Fauci, and now even the Jewish CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla. Are we seeing enough “breakthrough cases” that it appears there never was anything to “break through,” in the form of vaccine-induced protection? What barrier to infection is there to “break through”? Perhaps nothing.  As we will see, the CDC mostly asserts that vaccines reduce symptoms, not that they prevent contracting or transmitting disease. This is just one of the many internal walk-backs of the CDC.

The CDC’s “Covid Data Tracker” has a section which asks “Want more information on Covid-19 vaccine breakthrough cases?” I answered yes, and clicked the link to see what data the CDC provides on breakthrough cases on its page “The Possibility of Covid-19 After Vaccination: Breakthrough Infections.” The answer was none. I only got a generic explanation of what a breakthrough case means, and recommendations to get more vaccines. It included another direct condemnation of the “effectiveness” of vaccines themselves: “People who get vaccine breakthrough infections can spread COVID-19 to other people.”

Amazingly:

CDC monitors reported vaccine breakthrough infections to better understand patterns of COVID-19 among people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated. The latest rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths by vaccination status are available on the CDC COVID Data Tracker.

The Tracker cycles back to the first page, where no real data on breakthrough cases is provided. The numbers and percentages of breakthrough cases remains cryptic.

Naturally Acquired Immunity

The 2nd reason the CDC gives for why vaccinated and unvaccinated people are now issued the same recommendations is this:

Persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection.

Recall that in July 2021, the Jewish CDC Director Rochelle Walensky used the phrase “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” in her news conference speech. All mainstream media reported on this and magnified the message that we were afflicted with a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Choose WebMD, CNN, ABC, CNN, Yahoo! News and more, here. They all say almost exactly the same thing.

The following statement or similar was included in almost all main media reports: “White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients (Jewish) said four states accounted for 40% of new cases last week—one in five coming from Florida.” Florida was targeted for defamation because Governor Ron Desantis was defying CDC recommendations and rejecting covid lockdown policies, mask and vaccine mandates.

Earlier in the covid timeline, the World Health Organization (WHO) actually changed the definition of “Herd Immunity” to exclude naturally immune people through natural exposure, and retained only the vaccine-induced immunity contribution to herd immunity. On June 9^th 2020, the WHO defined Herd Immunity on its “Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19): Serology” page as: “the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.” By November 13^th, on essentially the same page (now further titled “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Serology, antibodies and immunity“), the WHO declared “‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.” WHO defended the change of definition with this line: “Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.”

If any credit can be given to the CDC at all, it did not change its own definition of what it terms “Community Immunity,” but retained the definition which included both naturally acquired immunity and vaccine-induced immunity as contributing to Community Immunity.

On November 12^th, 2021, almost exactly one year since the WHO definition change, the Los Angeles Times published an article titled “CDC shifts pandemic goals away from reaching herd immunity.” It states: “Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal.” The main reasons are given by Dr. Jefferson Jones, “a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force”:

Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months. The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread. (bold added)

Here a medical officer on the CDC’s Epidemiology Task Force admits that the covid vaccines do not prevent transmission. Now the CDC is saying that natural immunity is valid, and in the context of this statement by the CDC’s Jones, it appears even more valid than vaccination!

This should enrage hundreds of millions of people in our nation, especially those who got vaccinated thinking they were doing the only thing they could to produce what CDC calls Community Immunity, save their loved ones and end the pandemic. Even more outrageous, those who believe they contracted covid and recovered fine, but were still urged and coerced to get vaccinated, should be apoplectic. The CDC is now essentially admitting that they were wrong and natural immunity is once again acceptable and even preferred. It is unconscionable for the CDC to change its position on naturally acquired immunity, after having pushed vaccines as the only way to stop the pandemic.

Covid Vaccines only reduce symptoms, not prevent transmission

Here are more statements about vaccines—and now also natural acquired immunity—only preventing severe symptoms, from the CDC’s latest MMWR, “official Summary of Guidance for Minimizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Individual Persons, Communities, and Health Care Systems — United States, August (19) 2022”:

“Medically significant illness, death, and health care system strain can be reduced through vaccination and therapeutics to prevent severe illness…”

“high levels of vaccine- and infection-induced immunity…have substantially reduced the risk for medically significant COVID-19 illness (severe acute illness and post–COVID-19 conditions) and associated hospitalization and death.”

“The risk for medically significant illness…is considerably reduced by immunity derived from vaccination, previous infection, or both.”

“CDC recommends a strategic approach to minimizing the impact of COVID-19 on health and society that relies on vaccination and therapeutics to prevent severe illness.”

“Efforts to expand access to vaccination and therapeutics … should be intensified to reduce the risk for medically significant illness and death.”

All these statements refer to the vaccines’ as well as naturally acquired immunity’s ability to reduce severe symptoms and prevent hospitalization and death outcomes. None declare the vaccines are capable of preventing contracting or transmitting disease or viruses.

The following are all from the document’s “Vaccines and Therapeutics to Reduce Medically Significant Illness” section:

COVID-19 vaccines are highly protective against severe illness and death and provide a lesser degree of protection against asymptomatic and mild infection.

It is still talking about protecting from severe outcomes, though the second part of this statement is confusing. It cannot be claiming to reduce harmful outcomes from asymptomatic and mild infections, because there are none. And how do they really know that the vaccines reduce harmful outcomes when you acknowledge that the previously infected-but-unvaccinated are also unlikely to have harmful outcomes?

Receipt of a primary series alone, in the absence of being up to date with vaccination* through receipt of all recommended booster doses, provides minimal protection against infection and transmission (3,6). Being up to date with vaccination provides a transient period of increased protection against infection and transmission after the most recent dose, although protection can wane over time.

This document is the first time the CDC clearly claims vaccination prevents infection and transmission. Protection fades fast, though, and is only significant in double-boosted people for a short time. The first footnote #3 goes to a CDC study of October 2021, titled “Science Brief: SARS-CoV-2 Infection-induced and Vaccine-induced Immunity.” Some key quotes:

“Although comprehensive, it is neither a formal systematic review nor meta-analysis.”

“Data are presently insufficient to determine an antibody titer threshold that indicates when an individual is protected from infection.”

“At this time, there is no FDA-authorized or approved test that providers or the public can use to reliably determine whether a person is protected from infection.”

“Multiple studies have shown that antibody titers correlate with protection at a population level, but protective titers at the individual level remain unknown.”

“There are insufficient data to extend the findings related to infection-induced immunity at this time to persons with very mild or asymptomatic infection or children.”

The CDC admits all that it does not know in its reference document for this footnote. Its original statement in the MMWR is thus poorly supported.

Footnote #6 shows the “Covid Data Tracker,” including the “COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Monthly Update.” This source only includes updates on vaccine effectiveness up to the end of June. It states: “Protection is highest in adults who receive a booster dose.” Then it says: “No new CDC studies were published in June on COVID-19 effectiveness among adults.” As of June, adults administered one dose of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine had less than 18% effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infection, two weeks to a month after injection. Many other effectiveness rates are displayed in the complex chart, covering many age groups, different vaccines (all for covid), and over different time frames. The CDC emphasized in the title of the chart that these are all “estimates.” Many are under 50% and all are under 100% of course.

Returning to the MMWR from the beginning of this article, we see this statement:

“The rates of COVID-19–associated hospitalization and death are substantially higher among unvaccinated adults than among those who are up to date with recommended COVID-19 vaccination, particularly adults aged ≥65 years (5,7)”

I opened the links in the footnotes CDC provides here. The statement is a complete lie if based upon the study CDC cites, because the study says nothing about vaccination rates, only disability rates. It is titled “COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations Among Medicare Beneficiaries With and Without Disabilities — United States, January 1, 2020–November 20, 2021.”

I searched the document for vaccine-related information and found that the study never actually looked at vaccination status of these disabled subjects: “vaccination coverage was not considered in this analysis because of limitations in administrative reporting and data; persons with disabilities are less likely to receive COVID-19 vaccination than are persons without disabilities.” So they are inferring that negative outcomes in this group are partly the result of not being vaccinated, even though they acknowledge this group has many comorbidities, such as diabetes, obesity, etc.  Weak.

It was a recommendation to make vaccines accessible to elderly and disabled people to prevent severe illness and death (not prevent infection or transmission). It says nothing—NOTHING!—about unvaccinated people having higher incidence of death and hospitalization. Did CDC think no one would check?

The second footnote here only links back to the same document.

“Emerging evidence suggests that vaccination before infection also provides some protection against post–COVID-19 conditions,† and that vaccination among persons with post–COVID-19 conditions might help reduce their symptoms (8).” Both parts of this statement refer to reducing symptoms or “conditions,” not infection or transmission.

The link here goes to a meta study out of Britain, that examined results of 15 other studies on “The effectiveness of vaccination against long COVID.” It declares in most cases that vaccination improves symptoms of “long covid,” although they note that “All studies were observational, so the results may be from differences other than vaccination, and there was large heterogeneity between studies in the definition of long COVID,” and “there is a risk of bias across all studies due to differences in people who were vaccinated and unvaccinated, the measurement of outcomes, and in the selection of participants.”

Moreover, “it is unclear whether vaccination of previously unvaccinated people with long COVID is more likely to improve or worsen long COVID symptoms,” and “There were, however, some cases in all studies who reported a worsening in symptoms after vaccination.” And “In 3 of the 5 studies reporting on symptom changes following vaccination of people with long COVID, there was a higher proportion of people with long COVID who reported unchanged symptoms following vaccination (up to 70%) than people whose symptoms improved or worsened.”

The results are thus unclear; in some cases, symptoms got worse after vaccination, and the definition of “long COVID” varied among the studies. All we know is that symptoms were either unchanged, worse, or better. And there is no way to be sure that those who got better improved because of the vaccines.

Returning again to the MMWR, the CDC makes two statements using the phrase “irrespective of vaccination status.” “When implemented, screening testing strategies should include all persons, irrespective of vaccination status.” And: “Persons who have had recent confirmed or suspected exposure to an infected person should wear a mask for 10 days around others when indoors in public and should receive testing ≥5 days after exposure (or sooner, if they are symptomatic), irrespective of their vaccination status.”

Just yesterday I heard an ad on the radio. It is recommended to still get boosted with covid vaccines in order to reduce symptoms and relieve our hospital system of patient burden. This ad was paid for by funds from the Dept of Health and Human Services (which includes the CDC). Our tax money is paying for government-issued advertisements on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry to sell more vaccines. The point is: they admit now that the vaccines do not prevent contracting or transmitting disease. The CDC seems to have stopped also saying the opposite, that everyone must get vaccinated to stop the spread. Is this now damage control?

Public trust in the CDC is now so low that only 33% of people 50 and older are double-boosted and less than 4% of children 5 to 11 recommended for vaccination have received a single “booster.” Boosters prove that vaccines are a failed technology.

But despite all that, they just approved a  new omicron-specific booster before being “fully tested” on humans. I’m sure that will turn this disaster around. Or maybe not. The old saying that “if you’re in a hole, stop digging” comes to mind.

The CDC contradicts itself so often, public trust in the agency is near absent. With its shocking statement last week that vaccinated and unvaccinated people are issued the same covid prevention recommendations, distrust is turning into active contempt and outrage. Lawsuits are expected against the CDC over this, en masse. Anyone who subjected himself to a covid vaccination based on the CDC’s prior recommendations—which became coercsions–has a strong case now. Even the unvaccinated have strong claims against the CDC.