PP NewsBrief: 2021-03-08

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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Jake Tapper is a censor—shame on him

"Tapper shows the offending images in the censored Seuss books, writing: "Here are two of the empirically racist images from two of those books. Ask yourself why the self-styled culture warriors 'standing up' for Dr. Seuss don't show these offensive images or read from the actual books in question when they’re on this crusade."

For Tapper, the images themselves are reason to pull the books, and in his view it is right and good that the publisher should have removed the offending material from the public. In fact, for Tapper, it is the defense of the right to free speech that is the problem in as much as that defense must bring along with it a defense of the work itself. Of those elected leaders who have been touting their love of Seuss despite the purge, he writes:

"I would submit that they can't defend the images because they're indefensible. I would suggest that they don't show them to you on the floor of the House or in their little videos because they don't want to be associated with those racist images either.

"Again: if you’re going to defend the books and the images, defend the books and the images. [To defend others of Seuss work by way of defending the offensive work] would be like trying to defend Disney’s Song of the South by showing Frozen and Toy Story."

Surely Tapper doesn't think he is a proponent of censorship, but that's exactly what he is. He is saying that one cannot stand for the principle of free speech without defending the content of the speech itself. This is a complete misunderstanding of what it means to be in favor of free speech. To be in favor of free speech means to defend and to believe in the right of the speaker to speak, with no distinction between speech you agree with and speech you do not."

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Biden Iran envoy boasted of depriving civilians of food, driving up Iranian inequality in sadistic sanctions manual

"The Joseph Biden administration has named Richard Nephew as its Deputy Iran Envoy. As the former Principal Deputy Coordinator of Sanctions Policy for Barack Obama’s State Department, Nephew took personal credit for depriving Iranians of food, sabotaging their automobile industry and driving up unemployment rates. He has described the destruction of Iran’s economy as “a tremendous success,” and lamented during a visit to Russia that food was still plentiful in the country’s capital despite mounting US sanctions.

Nephew’s appointment to a senior diplomatic post suggests that rather than immediately returning to the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal, the Biden administration will finesse sanctions illegally imposed by Trump to pressure Iran into an onerous, reworked agreement that Tehran is unlikely to join.

After coordinating Obama’s sanctions regime against Iran, Nephew left the administration for a position at the energy industry-funded Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. There, he published a book outlining in blunt terms how he honed the craft of economic warfare and applied it against Iran.

Entitled “The Art of Sanctions: A View From The Field,” the book’s cover image features two Caucasian hands drawing a rope for a noose, presumably to strangle some insufficiently pliant Global South government. Its contents read like a list of criminal confessions, detailing in chillingly clinical terms how the sanctions Nephew conceived from inside an air conditioned office in Washington immiserated average Iranians.

With his candor, Nephew has shattered the official US rhetoric about “targeted sanctions” that exclusively punish “bad actors” and their business cronies while leaving civilian populations unharmed.

...

So who is Richard Nephew? Does he lurk in the shadow world of intelligence intrigues and spook wars, keeping a low profile while he waits to strike the enemy? Or is he a fire-breathing hardliner bellowing threats against America’s adversaries from Beltway think tank panels? The reality is much more banal.

When he is not snatching chicken from Iranian kids during their winter holiday, Nephew is spending quality time with his own, amusing them with his tattered dad rock t-shirts and flashing arms adorned with tribal tattoos.

In an administration filled with fun-loving, ethnically diverse characters who moonlight as rock guitarists, decorate the walls of their homes with Haitian art, bob their heads to Tupac and even enjoy an occasional toke, all while keeping the gears of a ferociously violent empire grinding along, the tattooed sanctions artist seems like a perfect fit."

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Idaho’s Citizen’s Committee on Election Integrity Adds to Trump’s Recommendations at CPAC

"As I mentioned, I paid particularly close attention to Trump’s list of action items, because on Jan. 2 of this year, a citizen’s committee met at the Idaho State Capitol to recommend minimum standards for fair and honest elections. I attended that meeting in person, and I may be a bit biased, but I think Idaho’s citizen committee offered additional excellent suggestions for ensuring election integrity (which were read into the Congressional Record). In fact, some of these ideas are flat out ingenious.

Know that I’ll be sending this list to Trump for his consideration, but feel free to beat me to it:

• All voting processes, other than those needed to preserve the privacy of a citizen’s vote, must be open and available for direct observation, with no minimum distance requirements, and audit by agents of the candidates or parties.
• All election materials must have a secure chain of custody at all times. Election officials must be accompanied by observers when accessing any election materials. Records of the chain of custody shall be complete and available for audit.
• All votes, regardless of voting method, shall be held to equal standards.
• Voters shall only be qualified electors that are able to verifiably provide their government issued photo identity before being issued a ballot. Voters who provide false information, including information of voter qualification, should face severe penalties.
• As a condition of being issued a ballot, the voter’s identity and signature must be recorded in a permanent record (Poll Book).
• Original Ballots must have a physical form that allows voting choices to be examined and properly interpreted by the naked eye.
• Ballots must have features designed to prevent counterfeiting.
• An auditable system for tracking the status of all ballots must be implemented and maintained in the State of origin. The total number of printed ballots must equal the sum of the number of cast ballots, spoiled ballots, and unvoted ballots.
• Ballot tabulation must be conducted by two independent and unrelated systems. The difference in totals between the two systems must be less than one half the margin of victory or 0.1% of the vote total, whichever is less. Tabulating machines must only tabulate and not modify ballots in any way, or be connected to the internet.
• Before the results of an election can be certified, the ballot counts must be reconciled with the voter records. The margin of uncertainty must be less than one half the margin of victory or 0.1% of the vote total, whichever is less.
• Lists of qualified electors must be purged of unqualified persons 180 days before an election. Voter Rolls should be vetted and compared with available government records to identify duplicate or ineligible registrations.
• Laws and regulations governing an election may not be changed for 180 days prior to that election.
• All election records should be retained and preserved for not less than 22 months.
• Voter identification for provisional ballots must be verified, with information provided by the voter, prior to that ballot being counted."

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Pelosi-appointed general recommends establishing permanent QUICK-REACTION TROOPS in DC to protect government from the governed

"Republicans blasted Pelosi in January for choosing Honore to lead the security review, saying he is too partisan. The retired general has a history of making controversial comments, such as calling Trump an “SOB” who “doesn’t care about people of color” and blasting federal officers sent to quell riots in Portland as an “uncontrolled mob” that wore military-like uniforms “as a function of intimidation.”

Honore also said falsely that a USCP officer was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher during the Capitol riot, and he called Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) “a little piece of s**t” who should be “run out of DC” for his “white privilege” and making allegations of election fraud against President Joe Biden.

Honore is best known for leading the National Guard response in New Orleans after the city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. His troops were allegedly involved in confiscating guns from residents after New Orleans Police Chief Eddie Compass III declared that only law enforcement officers would be allowed to have firearms amid the violent, post-storm chaos in the city."

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Alberta pastor will be jailed until May trial for holding services: judge

""BREAKING NEWS: Alberta court jails Pastor Coates through to May 3-5 trial Justice Peter Michalyshyn of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench in Edmonton has ruled that Pastor James Coates of Grace Life Church must remain in jail pending his trial," tweeted the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

Pastor Coates had been arrested for violating the terms of his bail, and had been initially charged with violating the province's lockdown measures, which completely prohibit churches to be open. The terms of his bail would have effectively shut the church down."

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The Equality Act Is Really the Inequality Act

"On February 18th, the bill was reintroduced by the 117th Congress and passed through the House by a 224-to-206 vote along party lines. (Three Republicans joined Democrats to vote in favor of the legislation.) It’s now on its way to the Democrat-led Senate, under the aegis of President Biden, who pledged to “make enactment of the Equality Act a top legislative priority during my first 100 days” before Americans even took to the voting books last November.

If enacted, the so-called Equality Act would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to explicitly extend discrimination protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. The Equality Act might as well be called the Inequality Act, however, because it provides privilege and strips others of true rights, and gives the government the power to dictate what sex and gender mean. It will trample on religious freedom, canceling the essential human rights of women in the process, and Republican (and all God-fearing, freedom-loving) Senate lawmakers should do everything in their power to prevent its passing.

...

What bills like this actually do is erode individual, universal rights to grant special status to specific groups in society. Today’s left is committed to this program of jettisoning individual rights in favor of collective rights, which are guaranteed at the level of groups. The problem with collective rights is intuitive: it creates a society of competing groups (tribalism). In this frankly illiberal view of political freedom, those with the most power, who can acquire the most control over political institutions on behalf of their group or tribe, have the most rights.

...

“The LGBT community has waited long enough,” Rep. David Cicilline, (D-RI), a co-sponsor of the bill, said before the vote last month: “The time has come to extend the blessings of liberty and equality to all of Americans regardless of who they are and who they love.”

What exactly has the LGBT community been waiting for? Is homosexuality illegal? Are homosexuals being rounded up and herded into camps or publicly shamed? Of course not. In fact, just the opposite is the case. The LGBT “community” enjoys not only tolerance and acceptance in American society, but their lifestyle is lauded in popular culture as almost a preferred way of life characterized by an appreciation of the arts and cultivation of good taste in all things. (Remember “Will and Grace” or “Modern Family”?)

It has become nearly impossible for religious leaders to criticize, as many faith traditions do, same-sex liaisons, or to publically invoke Biblical prohibitions against them. In fact, these acts of religious freedom have repeatedly been labeled as “hate speech,” and can be subject to criminal prosecution.

The Equality Act will make this easier to do.

...

...when someone’s demand for privilege supersedes another person’s basic right to life and liberty, it’s time to cry foul and demand a return to sanity.

It is crucial to the continuity of liberty that we get back to a basic understanding of what rights and privileges are. As a heterosexual male, I do not have unlimited rights—far from it, as I learn every day. I do not have a right to a mortgage or to rent any apartment that I choose: I can be turned down. I do not have a right to disrobe in the local Walmart or drink and drive. I could be arrested. I do not have a right to date any woman I want to: I can be rejected—or my wife would probably divorce me!

Rights are not unlimited, as we all know, but often forget when some “community” or other demands some kind of special status.

If a man wants to identify as a woman, then he has a right to do so. He does not, however, have a right to impose that illusion on everybody else or to usurp the rights of women."

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CDC: Face masks don’t prevent COVID-19, study finds masks have negligible impact on coronavirus numbers

"The CDC has admitted face masks do little to prevent the spread of COVID-19 amid mounting pressure to lift mask mandates across the U.S. In a new study, the CDC found face masks had a negligible impact on coronavirus numbers that didn’t exceed statistical margins of error.

...

The CDC added it still recommends wearing face masks, although it admitted such mandates do not make any statistical difference. In the meantime, some states across the nation have slowly returned to normalcy by putting an end to mask mandates."

You know what else showed masks don't work for this type of thing? Decades of research that public health experts had access to before demanding we all wear masks.

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In Search of Moral Order

"...the whole thought-world of modern America is rigged against social conservatism. I don’t even think social conservatives realize how true this is. This thought-world saturates everything, however imperceptibly. It entails a certain constraining logic that cannot be transcended except by breaking and replacing the thought-world in toto. By determining the rules of thinking, it makes certain conclusions inevitable and others unthinkable. And as long as this thought-world reigns, it will continue to erode the moral order social conservatives believe is vital. Social conservatives will continue to lose.

...

To provide any sort of intelligible—let alone persuasive—argument, within our thought-world, against gay-dad throuples who use hired women as babymakers, you’d need to invoke reason or science to show there was something harmful about the practice, or show that this arrangement relied on a violation of consent.

Why? Because the Enlightenment liberalism which spawned America’s thought-world stipulated it. It proclaimed reason as the ultimate arbiter of law and government. It also proclaimed adult consent as the ultimate criterion for permissibility. Those are the rules.

The problem for social conservatives concerned about a shared moral order is that all the adults did consent, and nothing in reason or science indicates being raised by three gay dads, with your surrogate mommy relegated to an annual visit, necessarily harms you, as weird as it all may seem.

...

But even worse for social conservatives is that in proclaiming reason the ultimate arbiter of law and government, Enlightenment liberalism (and its modern American incarnation), by that very fact, deny legitimacy to rival arbiters like tradition, moral intuition, religious authority, sentiment, scripture, culture, and faith.

In other words, America’s thought-world delegitimizes the entire basis of social conservatism from the get-go. It doesn’t help that its emphasis on the individual and his rights completes the social conservative demolition job by denying legitimacy to any invocation of the common good."

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Nullifying the Bullet Fee

"The government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Nullification essentially withdraws that consent. In practice, nullification is a state (or locality) choosing to not comply with federal diktats, edicts, and laws. It is effective because a state—a collective political body with its own law-making authority, tax revenues, and consent of its own governed—is harder for the federal system to crush than an individual citizen is.

Nullification as a defensive measure provides citizens with relief from unconstitutional edicts and breathing room to develop and sustain the political movements required to make effective changes in the local-state-federal governing relationship.

Blue cities and states effectively used nullification against the Trump Administration’s immigration policies under the sanctuary city movement, and they were supported by a judiciary that handed down precedent-setting decisions in support of the states. We are already seeing burgeoning attempts to nullify the new regime’s threatened gun control policies with Missouri’s Second Amendment sanctuary laws.

The federal bureaucracy has considerable power, but it is not omnipotent. In fact, in most cases, it exercises and enforces its laws and powers through the proxy of state and local governments. If state and local governments withdraw their participation and support, it creates a dilemma where federal officials are then forced to decide whether they can realistically carry out unpopular edicts with the resources they have available and within the restraints placed on them by the Constitution and the individual states.

A prime example of a potential state and local nullification target is the Department of Justice’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF). JTTFs operate in almost every state and locality and are primarily staffed with state and local law enforcement officers. The FBI directs the actions of the JTTF, and various other federal agencies provide personnel for intelligence and analytical support. The federal government makes partial financial reimbursements to the local governments for the use of these state and local resources and routinely provides hefty discretionary grants. These grants are often used to purchase tactical equipment, surveillance systems, and training at the local level. The state or local government is still responsible for the payroll, healthcare, and pension liability of its personnel.

On the surface, JTTFs look like free money for the states, with the added benefit of federal support to help rid them of bad guys. However, the JTTF answers to the bureaucrats in D.C., not to the states’ governors or officials.

...

In the early years of the Global War on Terror, we were fighting actual terrorist groups and their support networks with transnational capabilities and motivations. As the years wore on, however, we often ended up fighting people who were only fighting us because we were fighting them.

War is never surgical or without error, no matter what the Washington establishment portrays. There is always something—an incident, a mistaken identity, or an operation based on bad intelligence—that creates animosity within the local population. Thus, sons will avenge their fathers, and fathers, their sons. It is the way of war.

The story would be no less true if the JTTFs were to be unleashed on traditional Americans. These incidents inevitably would create a backlash from a citizenry that rightfully does not see itself as a legitimate target of federal counterterrorism operations. This would begin the ugly cycle of retaliation and escalation that was an unfortunate hallmark of the Global War on Terror—except now it will be here, in America.

For red-state governors, legislators, and other locally elected officials concerned with the peace and well-being of their people, now is the time to begin discussing nullification. We need to take a hard look at withdrawing state and local resources from federal entities that have already set their intent to target citizens for the crime of thinking differently. Those local resources can be redirected to protect and serve the interests of their local communities, instead of the ruling elites in Washington, New York, and Silicon Valley."

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Department of Pre-Crime: Left-Wing Protester Arrested by FBI for Being on a “Path to Radicalization”

"We’re on the road to the next 9/11, but not in the way you think.

The last 9/11 wasn’t just an event. It was a trigger for the radical restructuring of privacy and surveillance in American life, and the radical elevation of the National Security State as the new highest branch of government, a branch with such power and reach that no one with place and reputation to protect — not the Hayeses, the Maddows and Tappers; not the Bidens, the Harrises and Buttigiegs — would dare to oppose it.

The post-9/11 infrastructure, including its propaganda and consent-manufacturing arm, is now in place.

...

Yet things change. Since 9/11 occurred the nation has entered a new phase — it’s become pre-revolutionary on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum, become like boil that isn’t yet big enough to burst. In fact, though few with place and reputation to protect will admit it, the left and right have largely overlapped to create a vertical division, a “rich versus the rest” divide.

(This is a split the rich are working hard to obscure. That’s why so much of our professional media is “other-side obsessed” — why the pied pipers of the left, MSNBC and CNN, are so determined to gin up Trump-voter-hate, an anger that perfectly matches the older and well-tested liberal-voter-hate so relied on by pied pipers of the right. But let’s pass that point for the moment. We have other fish to fry.)

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The few feed on the many, surf with pleasure on the back of their forced labor, and the bent-down many cannot be allowed to object.

How to enforce this constraint in pre-revolutionary times? The Riot of January 6 is providing the perfect excuse to clamp down on any objection to “the way things have always been.”

But more than that, the one-time event of the riot allows a radical and permanent redefinition of political crime — not as an act of violence, but an act of thought. We’re entering the world of pre-emptive arrest, incarceration and prosecution for the political crime of being on the “path to radicalization.”

...

Daniel Baker was arrested and held without bond for posting the social media posts quoted above. Yet looking at the language, I’m not sure there’s a target named anywhere; just frustration.

Is being “willing to do ANYTHING to ANYONE so I don’t end up homeless and hungry again” a threat to an actual person. Do “racist mobs” count as a named target? “This weekend’s Proud Boys March at the Civic Center” would be a target. Anger at generalized “racist mobs” and those who cause homelessness sound more like hopeless frustration than threats.

Ask yourself: How many others could be jailed for voicing these thoughts? Thousands on any given day? Tens of thousands? The number of Baker-class criminals must be very high.

Yet how many would act on those sentiments if they had them? You can count that for yourself — one or two a year at the very most.

In addition, the shape of rebellion doesn’t have to be a violent mess. It can also be simply a threat to the existing order, a willingness to say no until actual justice arrives, to “put your bodies upon the gears and the wheels” of the machine and just make it stop. Yet even that is a crime — especially that is a crime — to those fed by the machine."

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3-month-old babies are racist, says Arizona Department of Education's 'equity' toolkit

"The toolkit teaches, among other things, that babies start to become racist at just three months of age. The toolkit insists that babies must be spoken to about race, as "letting children draw their own conclusions based on what they see" leads to racism. It is unclear how allowing children to think for themselves leads to racism.

It also suggests that white children specifically are strongly biased in favour of their own race by the time they are five years old, but claimed that such a phenomenon does not exist among black and "latinx" children.

To solve this problem, the toolkit advises parents to begin speaking to their children about race "even before their children can speak.""

Could it be that many white babies see mostly white people, both in person and in media? While the nonwhite babies see more white people in both because there's more of them? Could you also find the same correlation between fear of dogs and exposures to them?

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Newsweek forced to admit Buffalo schools teaching kids to blame ‘all white people’ is true, not ‘HALF-TRUE’ in big fact-check FAIL

"After public schools in Buffalo, New York have been called out for blaming “all white people” for perpetuating systematic racism, “fact-checkers” tried to disprove it – only to be left red-faced when confronted with evidence.

Journalist Chris Rufo has been vindicated after fact-checkers accused him of misreporting the contents of a Black Lives Matter-themed curriculum being employed at Buffalo Public Schools (BPS) last month. The magazine quietly confirmed that BPS was, in fact, teaching its students to blame all white people for the suffering of others.

While Rufo showed the curriculum claimed that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism,” citing lesson plans and teaching materials received from a whistleblower at the Erie County schools, Newsweek argued his claims were only “half true,” because BPS was “not organizing lesson plans around that one phrase, which is for middle school students only, nor are they pushing any of the research as hard and fast facts.”

...

However, Rufo was quick to respond, presumably supplying more of the lesson material he’d been slipped by his inside contact, and by Monday had “forced” Newsweek’s fact-checkers to retract their judgement and issue his story a 'true' rating. Indeed, according to the materials Rufo obtained from the whistleblower, the lessons directed at younger children are even more divisive and controversial.

Students as young as kindergarten were shown a video depicting dead black children, for example, supposedly in an effort to warn four-to-six year olds about “racist police and state-sanctioned violence” and learn about the “sickness” of American society. Students in fourth and fifth grades were also encouraged to embrace “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics” in order to “return to the ‘collective village’ that takes care of each other,” and finish the fifth grade with an essay exploring “a society without ‘separate, nuclear family units.’”

Ten-year-olds also learned their country was operating a “school-to-grave pipeline” for black children."

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Canceling Dr. Seuss books erases author's history learning from his mistakes

"Yet few calls for the cancellation of Seuss that I know of have ever been at play. In fact, Dr. Seuss Enterprises has always known and acknowledged some of Dr. Seuss's racist works point out that while the author had previously erred in his bigoted illustrations of people, he later learned from his mistakes and evolved. This is posted on the Dr. Seuss Enterprises' website under the page, "Dr. Seuss Use of Racist Images:"

"While the vast majority of the works he produced are positive and inspiring, Ted Geisel also drew a handful of early images, which are disturbing. These racially stereotypical drawings were hurtful then and are still hurtful today. However, Ted's cartoons and books also reflect his evolution. Later works, such as The Sneetches or Horton Hears a Who!, emphasize inclusion and acceptance. Ted would later edit some of his inappropriate images, depicting his characters in a more respectful manner."

Herein lies the rub with "canceling" Dr. Seuss for mistakes he not only acknowledged but corrected: Scrubbing books from his own record gaslights the public into believing he was always on point, always a good man, always accurate in his portrayal of humanity. He was not. He admittedly was not. Allowing his "controversial" books to remain in circulation and to continue to be purchased, along with his later books, where he shows a restorative spirit towards humanity, demonstrates an artist's capability to learn, adapt, change, and reform. Banning controversial books cuts short the author's full developmental arc: What good is atonement without a previously acknowledged sin?

Furthermore, the eager cancelation of a great man's illustrations from the typical, leftist crowd is, at the very least hypocritical: These are the same people who claimed "Cuties," via Netflix, was adorable—a show that sexualized young girls. These are the same people who suggest that anything other than the celebration of Desmond, the pre-teen drag "queen" who has been wearing drag since he was a toddler, is bigotry. These are the same people who claim the sexual exploitation of children, even entertainment with explicit sexual content fails to adversely affect children. Either it does affect children, and it must be dealt with, discussed, even regulated—or it does not, and there is no need to applaud the decision to stop publishing some of Dr. Seuss's material."

This also highlights a problem with long copyright periods. Without copyright anyone would be free to continue making copies of these works available to people. Copyright actually makes cancel culture more effective because you only need to bully one entity: The one with the exclusive rights.

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Does Suffering Provide Meaning and Purpose in Life?—A Reply to Freya India

"The point that is not adequately made is that many members of Generation Z are existentially impoverished because they have been exposed throughout their lives to the relentless rhetoric of victimhood and moral perfectionism, exacerbated by the pressure-cooker atmosphere of social media. This encourages a distorted and passive-reactive understanding of the self, deficient in the attributes that might motivate an individual to become an independently active agent in their own self-development. Instead, it induces a reliance on the opinions of others, and a dependence on their approval (many years ago, this was characterised by social psychologists as being “other-directed” rather than “inner-directed”). Contemporary progressive ideology—like many radical ideologies—offers supposed remedies for the victims it manufactures, and yet these only trap them in their plight.

The result is to deprive susceptible individuals of the opportunity to take possession of and direct their own sense of self, to take charge of their lives, and thus develop their own conception of personal responsibility (to themselves and others). In so doing, they generate for themselves a sense of meaning and purpose that is unique to them and not a manufactured product of the society and culture in which they live. But instead, many members of Generation Z seem to see themselves as dependent upon others for their mental wellbeing rather than as the architects of their own future. One might say they exist to suffer, instead of seizing life and pursuing their dreams.

None of this has anything to do with suffering as such. But it does have a great deal to do with being pathologically self-absorbed and emotionally insecure, while lacking the motivation and initiative—and the courage—necessary to break out of the psychological prison of emotional dependency. Freya India almost arrives at this conclusion, but can’t quite bring herself to acknowledge the dreadful circumstances in which she and the other members of Generation Z live.

So the question I am left with is this: Does suffering provide meaning and purpose in life? My answer is: Only if you are unable to think of anything better. And that might be the worst suffering of all."

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The Stats on Covid-Vaccine Injury and Death Don’t Add Up

"There are at least three clues to why there is dramatic under-reporting of serious illness and death from the vaccine.

One clue is that for years now politicians and public-health bureaucrats have been saturating the airwaves, academe and health-care institutions with the messaging that vaccines are safe and effective. They tell us ceaselessly that serious adverse events are one in a million.

The same goes for the Covid vaccines. We’re told the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and other shots were thoroughly tested in “large clinical trials” before being used in the populace at large. And that they had to be rushed into use because they’re critical for saving lives in the midst of the worldwide Covid emergency.

The second clue for here in Ontario is that the same person who’s in charge of the rushing of vaccines into millions of people’s arms also heads the office that leads death investigations, including deaths of people who died from Covid or who passed away shortly after receiving a Covid vaccine.

That person is Dirk Huyer. I’ve written previously about his prominence in pushing the official Covid narrative and rushing Covid vaccines into millions of Ontarians’ arms.

(On May 11 and May 26, 2020, I documented his role in drastically changing the way deaths are handled in Ontario, making it far harder to determine whether a death attributed to Covid was instead caused by something else; and on October 20, 2020, I wrote about how Huyer has climbed the bureaucratic ladder by serving the powerful rather than the populace).

...

The third clue is that doctors seldom report adverse events. When people get really sick or die after getting a vaccination the docs attribute that to anything but the vaccines. It’s been that way for years. Anyone who wonders aloud whether the Covid vaccines or other shots cause harm is immediately branded as “anti-vax” and “anti-science.” That’s a career-threatening consequence for health professionals.

And of course on top of that there’s huge pressure to go along with the push to vaccinate billions of people in as short a time as possible."

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In His Final Days, Trump Gave Up on Forcing Release of Russiagate Files

"After four years of railing against “deep state” actors who, he said, tried to undermine his presidency, President Donald Trump relented to U.S. intelligence leaders in his final days in office, allowing them to block the release of critical material in the Russia investigation, according to a former senior congressional investigator who later joined the Trump Administration.

Kash Patel, whose work on the House Intelligence Committee helped unearth U.S. intelligence malpractice during the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” probe, said he does not know why Trump did not force the release of documents that would expose further wrongdoing. But he said senior intelligence officials “continuously impeded” their release—usually by slow-walking their reviews of the material. Patel said Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, was instrumental in blocking one of the most critical documents.

Patel, who has seen the Russia probe’s underlying intelligence and co-wrote critical reports that have yet to be declassified, said new disclosures would expose additional misconduct and evidentiary holes in the CIA and FBI’s work.

...

Patel did not suggest that a game-changing smoking gun is being kept from the public. Core intelligence failures have been exposed—especially regarding the FBI’s reliance on Christopher Steele’s now-debunked dossier to secure FISA warrants used to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But he said the withheld material would reveal more misconduct as well as major problems with the CIA’s assessment that Russia, on Vladimir Putin’s orders, ordered a sweeping and systematic interference 2016 campaign to elect Trump. Patel was cautious about going into detail on any sensitive information that has not yet been declassified."

Here's a good reason why getting behind a Trump 2024 run would be a poor choice. He doesn't seem to have either the guts or the wisdom (I can't tell which) necessary to crush the Deep State.

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President Trump calls on GOP to stop using his name for fundraising

"“Now more than ever is the time for tough, strong and energetic Republican leaders who have spines of steel,” President Trump stated. “We need strong leadership. We cannot have leaders who show more passion for condemning their fellow Americans than they have ever shown for standing up to Democrats, the media.”"

This coming from the guy who invited his supporters to DC and then immediately threw them under the bus. Trump's spine must be made out of that poor quality Chinese steel. Trump wouldn't last a day if treated like #BrunoCua.

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UK minister praises mass personal data use during pandemic, calls for more of it in the future

"According to the UK’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden, one of the lessons learned from the pandemic is to make more use of data, to improve Britain’s post-Brexit position in the world.

And Dowden’s not talking about just any data: in an op-ed published by the Financial Times, he singles out the genetic and personal health data, that he says not only helped develop one of the Covid vaccines, but also made the experience of those getting inoculated with it convenient, since a system has been put in place alerting them via text or email.

This government official is clearly happy with the way data has been used during the pandemic, and with that in mind, wants to change the perspective and the negative connotations around harvested data as a risk factor when it comes to people’s privacy – and “rebrand” widespread and rapid data collection and sharing as an opportunity.

To this end, Dowden is announcing that the new head of UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – who upholds information rights in the public interest and is sponsored by his department – will be tasked with achieving the goals of this apparent shift in policy, that is explained as having the aim of ensuring “people can use data to achieve economic and social goals.”"

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Progressive Dems Unsuccessfully Push to Lower Voting Age to 16

"“A sixteen-year-old in 2021 possesses a wisdom and a maturity that comes from 2021 challenges, 2021 hardships, and 2021 threats,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, one of the progressives behind the amendment, said in a statement Monday. “Now is the time for us to demonstrate the courage that matches the challenges of the modern-day sixteen and seventeen-year-old.”

Reps. Pressley, Grace Meng (D-NY) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill) reintroduced the amendment Monday.

Pressley said in February  that she was “shocked” that lowering the voting age to 16 is a “polarizing” subject in Congress.

“I was shocked by how polarizing an issue this was, and listen, when I would tell people [the late Rep.] John Lewis is an original co-sponsor of this – you know, our young people deserve to have a stakeholder in our democracy,” Pressley said."

So many Democrat plans seem to involve using groups of ignorant people...