PP NewsBrief: 2021-03-17

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.

========

mRNA Vaccine Technology is “Hacking the Software of Life”. Modifies the Human Genome

"Since seasonal flu was renamed covid early last year, the largest-scale, US state-sponsored, war on public health has been ongoing with destructive force.

Casualties are increasing exponentially, the true toll suppressed, the tip of the iceberg alone reported.

What US and UK public health authorities revealed establishment media suppressed — as part of their complicity with dark forces and Pharma, pushing what harms health, not the other way around.

What’s been going on since mass-jabbing for covid began in Europe, then the US, and elsewhere last December, unprecedented harm to public health is just beginning.

No end to it is planned by US-led Western dark forces, intending forever mass-jabbing with booster shots for new annual strains.

...

What’s going on with no end of it in prospect is arguably the most diabolical con game in human history — countless millions likely to be irreparably harmed, the body count likely to continue increasing exponentially.

According to Technocracy News on March 9, Moderna’s “top scientist,” Dr. Tal Zaks, said the firm’s mRNA technology in use for covid mass-jabbing is “hacking the software of life.”

He revealed the above on a 2017 talk show, saying that for over the past 30 years:

   “(W)e’ve been living this phenomenal digital scientific revolution, and I’m here today to tell you, that we are actually hacking the software of life, and that it’s changing the way we think about prevention and treatment of disease,” adding:

   “In every cell there’s this thing called messenger RNA or mRNA for short, that transmits the critical information from the DNA in our genes to the protein, which is really the stuff we’re all made out of.”

   “This is the critical information that determines what the cell will do.”

   “So we think about it as an operating system” — that irreversibly alters human DNA with unknown, potentially devastating consequences.

   “So if you could change that, if you could introduce a line of code, or change a line of code, it turns out, that has profound implications for everything, from the flu to cancer.”

mRNA technology used by the company and Pfizer for covid mass-jabbing is extremely hazardous to human health.

It should be banned, not permitted for use on anyone.

...

None of the above would get out of the starting gate without establishment media complicity.

In the mid-1970s, the US Senate’s Church Committee revealed that the CIA uses domestic and foreign media to aid its diabolical agenda.

They’re bribed and otherwise enlisted to report fake news over the real thing — state-approved propaganda of what’s vital for everyone to know.

The above applies to domestic and geopolitical issues — state-approved talking points over truth-telling journalism.

They’re featured daily in the US and West — in print, on television, even on the silver screen by Hollywood.

We’re repeatedly and consistently lied to by US dark forces and complicit media on virtually all major issues mattering most — notably what affects our health, well-being and fundamental rights."

========

“COVID Denialism” Now Enshrined in Case Law

"COVID denialism – a broad term leveled at those who have seen through lies regarding the COVID scamdemic – has been enshrined in legal history and case law, at least in Canada.

This is another horrendous yet sadly predictable step of the COVID agenda, which is none other than the agenda to steal your rights and freedom.

MSM outlet CBC reported last week that a judge stripped a man (who remains anonymous at this stage) of his custody rights in his divorce case with his ex-wife due to his belief that COVID was a hoax, and his subsequent decision to defy social distancing and mask wearing rules. In other words, he was stripped of some of his rights due to his COVID denialism.

...

I have been unable to locate the link to the original ruling, and the CBC article does not link to it, however the article reported that the judge explicitly wrote that the man’s public promotion of his opinions was affecting the health and welfare of his children:

   “Ontario Superior Court Justice George W. King denied a Windsor man interim custody of his kids because the man’s fervent anti-masking beliefs means he wouldn’t take appropriate actions to keep them safe from COVID-19. The decision notes the man believes COVID-19 to be a hoax and has boasted in public about flouting health restrictions such as masking and social distancing.

   “The health and welfare of the children (and by extension their principal caregiver) should not be jeopardized because of [his] public behaviour in promotion of his opinions,” he wrote.”

This is quite an astounding thing for a judge to write, since it shows how the judge has bought the official COVID narrative hook, line and sinker. The judge is saying that if you challenge the theory (i.e. brainwashing propaganda) that COVID is a highly lethal dangerous disease, that can only be contained or avoided with mandatory social distancing and masking, that therefore you are “jeopardizing” the health of your kids. Wow. It is truly shocking a judge could be so out-of-touch with scientific reality. However, it gets worse. The CBC further reported:

   ““I have concluded that the respondent’s behaviour is dictated by his world view. Everything else is subordinate to that view, including, but not limited to, his love for his children,” the decision by Justice King read.”

...

Finally, it turns out this judicial decision will impact whether his children could get vaccinated:

   “Justice King called some of what the man had posted about COVID-19 not being real as erroneous, pointing out rise in hospitalizations and deaths due to the virus as well as the effect that has had on health care providers having to delay other medical procedures because of the tax the virus has placed on the system.

   “The long-term effects of the pandemic and of delayed treatments to persons with other health conditions is currently unmeasurable,” justice King wrote.

   “All of this has occurred while a percentage of our population, including [the man], continue to deny the existence, significance and/or impact of COVID-19.”

   The ruling includes giving the mother the power to make decisions around vaccination. But it noted the interim custody was awarded wholly within the context of the pandemic and can be revisited once it subsides.”"

========

Capitol Investigation Seeks to Criminalize Political Dissent

"In the early hours of March 12, FBI agents in southwestern Florida barricaded a neighborhood to prepare to raid the home of one resident. Christopher Worrell of Cape Coral was arrested and charged with several counts related to the January 6 Capitol melee. Even though Worrell had been cooperating with the FBI for two months, the agency nonetheless unleashed a massive, and no doubt costly, display of force to take him into custody.

Law enforcement agents, according to one neighbor who spoke with a reporter, wore “whole outfits . . . like military and it was crazy. There was like six or seven . . . big black vehicles. They busted down the front door.” The raid included “armed men with helmets and a tanker truck” and was partially executed by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Worrell never entered the Capitol building on January 6; he isn’t accused of committing a violent crime. But a D.C. judge overturned a Florida judge’s ruling to release Worrell pending further review of his case. He remains in jail.

...

The differences between how the government is handling the January 6 defendants and other so-called protestors could not be more stark. For example, a Portland investigative reporter found the Justice Department has dropped more than one-third of the federal cases related to last summer’s riots in that city, with more to come. Only about a dozen people have been arrested for last week’s rioting in Portland, which included attacks on a federal courthouse.

But the violence in Portland is different, according to Merrick Garland, who said during his confirmation hearing the Capitol attack was “domestic terrorism” because the January 6 protestors attempted “to disrupt democratic processes.” The term doesn’t apply to attacks on the Portland courthouse, Garland claimed, because those only happen at night when court is out of session.

...

Garland’s explanation, however absurd it sounds to the majority of Americans, bolsters one of the Justice Department’s most widely-used allegations in its Capitol investigation. More than 75 protestors now face one count of “obstruction of an official proceeding.”

The temporary disruption of Congress’ attempt to certify the Electoral College results, a task completed 13 hours after the chaos began, is repeatedly cited in charging documents as evidence of wrongdoing: “It [is] a crime to corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding—to include a proceeding before Congress—or make an attempt to do so,” several affidavits read.

But the government’s attempt to apply this vague law to defendants in the Capitol case is a stretch, to say the least. In several instances, it represents an enhancement charge to add a felony to mostly misdemeanor offenses.

Further, there’s no indication the law pertains to a proceeding before Congress. Here’s the exact text from the statute prosecutors cite: “Whoever corruptly . . . otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

...

In his signing statement, President George W. Bush explicitly rebuked any intention to use the law against Americans. “To ensure that no infringement on the constitutional right to petition the Government for redress of grievances occurs in the enforcement of section 1512(c) . . . which among other things prohibits corruptly influencing any official proceeding, the executive branch shall construe the term ‘corruptly’ in section 1512(c)(2) as requiring proof of a criminal state of mind on the part of the defendant,” Bush said in July 2002.

...

What Worrell and others did—those who didn’t commit crimes such as assault a police officer or vandalize property—is wholly American and well within the protections of the First Amendment.

Perhaps that explains why thousands of protestors who occupied the Hart Senate Office building in October 2018 to interrupt the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh didn’t face “obstruction of an official proceeding” charges. Ditto for those who surrounded and banged on the doors of the Supreme Court. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was not accused of inciting an insurrection after she fired up the crowd that later stormed the Senate building and harassed U.S. senators.

Trump-hating thugs who tore up the nation’s capital during his 2017 inauguration also did not face extra charges for “obstruction of an official proceeding.” In fact, nearly all of the charges eventually were dropped by the same U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. now overseeing the Capitol riot investigation.

...

Convicting any of the Capitol defendants on charges of obstructing an official proceeding will cross a dangerous line—a line government prosecutors and federal judges clearly feel undeterred to cross. This isn’t about justice, it’s about partisan retribution and revenge. And the consequences will be disastrous."

Too many seem to forget that America was founded via acts of violence & property destruction. People need to stop taking the intellectually lazy position that all violence & destruction is created equal. There is a massive gap between torching a nail salon and smashing the windows of the Capitol.

========

America’s Critical Race Delusion Must Be Stopped

"According to information obtained from a Buffalo Public Schools district whistleblower instead of working on practical measures to improve the district’s dismally low academic performance, administrators have implemented “equity based instructional strategies.” The centerpiece of this view is that “America is built on racism,” a view propagated by district diversity czar Fatima Morrell. She has also proclaimed that “America’s sickness” leads some to believe that blacks are “not human,” making it easier to “shoot someone in the back seven times if you feel like it.”

The view that education should be shaped through a framework that claims to resolve racial disparities is an appeal to an emerging scholarship known as critical race theory (CRT). This story is an all too common one in which American public institutions are being plagued by this ahistorical anti-American ideology. It is a negativist theory that relies on the ability to find racism in every facet of society and is propped up daily by divisive media talking heads who push discordant content for views and clicks.

Not only has critical race theory regressed the national conversation on race, but it’s regressed the national conversation in general. Consider for a moment how, just last week, a member of the White House press corps asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki to respond to the profoundly stupid criticism that vaccinating teachers first is “anti-equity” because most teachers are white. The question was inspired by criticism from infectious disease specialist Dr. Celine Gounder, a health “equity” activist who spends quite a bit of time on the media circuit. Gounder is a critical race theorist who hosts a podcast called American Diagnosis, which claims to expose how health is influenced by institutional racism. “Poor health? It isn’t random,”  the show’s blurb claims. “[W]e’re talking about the divide between the people who’ll live long and healthy lives and those who won’t.

...

According to the American Bar Association, critical race theory is a way of “interrogating race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship.” It originated from a workshop at Harvard in the 1970s, and as you can tell from the definition, is often expressed by its proponents as a verb. That is because it is supposed to be an ever-evolving practice of finding racism throughout society (even where there isn’t any).

...

This once-obscure way of thinking about race has become one of the most popular ways of thinking in America and it’s taking over the public school system. Critical race pedagogies have been implemented in school systems in Virginia Beach, California, Maryland, and countless other places. In fact, the threat of critical race theory has become so prevalent among institutions of learning that a Cornell Law School professor launched a website to track it’s spread.

...

CRT is what led masses of Americans to believe that typically isolated incidents, like the murder of Ahmad Arbery and death of George Floyd, were justification to burn and loot businesses. The Harvard Political Review’s Ria Modak rationalizes the destruction when she wrote that “looting has long remained an act of resistance in movements for racial justice in America.” Critical race theory isn’t deadly in an abstract way; its lethality is what took the life of David Dorn during protests and violence deemed the “summer of unrest” that led to the deaths of at least twenty-five Americans.

Everyone must stand in complete and total opposition to this way of thinking, but it starts with conservatives.

...

Instead of digging in with Lindsay and Trump in the fight against critical race theory, some on the right actually criticized Trump’s executive order aimed at removing the influence of critical race frameworks in government thinking. They argued he was poking the bear or creating more federal overreach. Some, not recognizing the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of this ideology, make the mistake of equating critical race theory to “teaching the children the truth about all the ugliness in American history,”  as Reason Magazine’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown opined.

But the folly of not understanding critical race theory is confusing it for history, harmless alternative instances of political correctness, or benign racial sensitivity teachings. Critical race theorists believe that simple diversity training isn’t enough.” They want infinite symbolic actions, funding of critical race theory programs and research, disciplinary measures for offenders of inclusion policies, new curriculum requirements, and a new criminal justice system."

========

The Culture Curators Want To Think For You

"Many intellectuals in the United States frequently toss around the word “dictatorship” or “dictator” about political parties they don’t like, and with such abandon, it is now deemed normal in some circles to use the terms without irony, primarily when referring to the Republican Party.

In their zeal to dismantle conservatism, they miss the true dictator in our country. They are our cultural curators. The corporations, much of the media, the entertainment industry, major league sports organizations, academia and Silicon Valley all demand that we fall in line with how they think. They want to approve of how we speak, what books we read, what movies we watch, what words we use, who we support politically, how we educate our children and what parts of history are acceptable to teach.

Many of these entities have gone from trying to appeal to a wide range of customers based on the products they sell or services they offer to social justice organizations, far removed from their core missions and their consumers.

When one of them deems something unacceptable in its version of the world, many others follow suit, often crumbling to their younger employees’ demands. The latter has been given enough power in this age of corporate social justice to destroy the very place they work if that corporation does not bend to their demands.

...

One of the most significant reasons conservative populism began to rise in 2009 was that these people lacked a connection or commonality with our cultural curators. The people who run things in this country have little in common with the very people who use their products or watch their shows or attend their football or basketball games.

Part of that reason is the culture curator boardrooms have very little diversity—not only racial or by gender, but also in culture. Rarely does someone who attended a community college or state school have any input in how something is marketed. There is also a scarcity of gun owners or churchgoers in newsrooms getting dispatched to cover gun control, hunting, religious freedom, or the anti-abortion movement.

When you have little commonality with those you are marketing to or covering, you will often be blind to how they view the tone in an ad, tweet, or coverage.

But the more significant problem is that none of these cultural curators quite care if you don’t like the way they demand you think or if you are going to buy their product, because their people—the people who think the way they do—are the people who have the largest megaphone.

It isn’t cancel culture. It is a cultural dictatorship because the suppression of dissenting speech is an instrument that only the most brutal dictators have used throughout civilization."

========

A Pesticide-Laced Flea Collar Has Been Linked to Almost 1,700 Pet Deaths. Why Hasn’t the EPA Issued a Warning?

"Rhonda Bomwell had never used a flea and tick collar before. Pierre, her 9‑year-old Papillon service dog, was mostly an indoor animal.

Still, her veterinarian recommended she purchase one, so Bomwell went to the pet store near her home in Somerset, New Jersey, and selected Bayer’s Seresto collar.

A day later, on June 2, 2020, Pierre had a seizure, collapsing while Bomwell was making dinner. Lying on his back, the dog stopped breathing and his eyes rolled back.

Bomwell tried giving him CPR. Then she called the police. An officer helped her lift the dog into her car, and she rushed him to the hospital. Pierre died before he could receive medical treatment. Bomwell didn’t think to take off Pierre’s collar.

“I just didn’t put it together,” she said.

Bomwell isn’t alone. Seresto, one of the most popular flea and tick collars in the country, has been linked to hundreds of pet deaths, tens of thousands of injured animals and hundreds of harmed humans, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents show.

Yet the EPA has done nothing to inform the public of the risks.

...

Since Seresto flea and tick collars were introduced in 2012, the EPA has received incident reports of at least 1,698 related pet deaths. Overall, through June 2020, the agency has received more than 75,000 incident reports related to the collars, including nearly 1,000 involving human harm.

...

This isn’t the first time that the EPA has failed to properly regulate flea and tick collars containing pesticides, said Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The NRDC filed a petition against the agency more than a decade ago over its approval of a different pesticide than the one used in Seresto that is linked to cancer and brain development issues in children.

In April 2020, a federal appeals court called the EPA’s refusal to respond to NRDC’s requests ​“nothing short of egregious” and told agency officials to make a decision on whether to ban the pesticide within 90 days. The EPA decided not to ban the pesticide, called tetrachlorvinphos. NRDC has challenged that decision; that lawsuit is currently pending.

...

To Bomwell, the worst part was the lack of warning. Pierre had never been sick or had a seizure. He was just 9, so she thought he had half a decade left. Her last dog had died at 18. Plus, she felt like she was responsible. She was the one who put the collar on.

“It was so bizarre,” Bomwell said. ​“It’s just been a nightmare.”

...

Without the federal government stepping in, individuals are left in the dark.

That’s something Ron Packard, of Brockton, Massachusetts, is hoping to address.

In the days after the death of his two dogs in June 2019, Packard did what any person looking for answers does: He went to the internet.

Two of Packard’s four dogs had recently had seizures on the same day, before becoming lethargic and vomiting and finally, refusing to eat. He brought them to the veterinarian, who couldn’t find a problem.

Within weeks, the two previously healthy cavachons, 10-year-old Danny and 5‑year-old Dominic, were both dead.

The only thing Packard could figure out was both dogs had started wearing Seresto flea and tick collars a month before.

“Thirty-three and 54 days later, they’re both dead,” Packard said.

Packard created a Facebook page, asking people who had similar issues to share their stories.

Today, the page fills up with pictures and stories like Packard’s.

A dog starts wearing a collar. Within weeks, a dog will have a seizure, sometimes it will later die. Other stories aren’t quite as extreme. Loss of hair around the neck. Lethargy.

Packard encourages everyone to report their story to the EPA.

“I don’t want others to go through what we went through,” he said. ​“Every time I read the stories, it brings me back to my dogs. But if I can save a few pets, I can deal with it.”"

Despite the rhetoric of many, the EPA is not a benevolent protector of the environment and the health of average people. And, despite the rhetoric of many others, the EPA is not the enemy of business. Regulatory agencies like the EPA are in the pockets of big corporations. They most certainly do not do what their supporters claim they will: Protect average people from the ignorance and greed of powerful interests.

========

Innocent Until Proven Wealthy

"The use of pre-trial detention has expanded rapidly since the 1970s. Now, U.S. jails detain more than 700,000 people each day, almost three-quarters of whom have not been convicted of a crime. Those who have the cash can get bailed out and wait at home for their day in court, while those who can’t afford it wait in jail.

The pretext of the cash bail system is to ensure defendants show up for their day in court, but critics say it criminalizes poverty and creates a two-tiered justice system. The median bail amount for felonies is $10,000, for example — just under a year’s income for the average woman who currently finds herself unable to pay. Even 10% of that amount (the typical nonrefundable premium paid up front by the defendant to a commercial bail bond service, which collects the rest in collateral, to be released on bail) can be insurmountable, given that around 40% of the country struggles to come up with $400 in an emergency.

...

One 2018 study finds that people who can’t make bail wait an average of 50 to 200 days for trial, creating losses in employment and housing. They are also more likely to get harsher sentences if convicted, or plead guilty just to speed up the process and get out sooner."

This is often billed as a left-wing cause but ending cash bail should be supported by all average Americans. It's important to point out that ending cash bail does not ban all pretrial confinement. It just means that your wealth does not determine whether you remain in jail pending trial.

========

US indicts CEO of company that provides encrypted phones

"“The indictment alleges that Sky Global generated hundreds of millions of dollars providing a service that allowed criminal networks around the world to hide their international drug trafficking activity from law enforcement,” said Acting US Attorney Randy Grossman during the announcement of the indictment. “This groundbreaking investigation should send a serious message to companies who think they can aid criminals in their unlawful activities.”

The CEO of an associate of Sky Global, Jean-Francois Eap and Thomas Herdman, was also indicted. The announcement described Eap and Herdman as “a former high-level distributor” of devices with Sky Global’s software. The firms are being charged under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, which is usually used for mafia mob bosses. However, the Southern District of California has previously used the law against Phantom Secure, another phone encryption software provider.

The indictment marks only the second time the DoJ has gone after a phone encryption company. It shows that the DoJ is no longer viewing phone encryption companies as a “neutral party,” but companies that deliberately aid criminal activity.

“Sky Global’s purpose was to create, maintain, and control a method of secure communication to facilitate the importation, exportation, and distribution of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine into Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America, including the United States and Canada; to launder the proceeds of such drug trafficking conduct; and to obstruct investigations of drug trafficking and money laundering organizations by creating, maintaining, and controlling a system whereby Sky Global would remotely delete evidence of such activities,” the DoJ said during the announcement.

...

Eap said that the software helps legitimate businesses and individuals protect their privacy.

“The platform exists for the prevention of identity theft and hacking, the protection of personal privacy rights, and the secure operation of legitimate personal and business affairs. With the global rise of corporate espionage, cybercrime and malicious data breaches, privacy and protection of information is the foundation of the effective functioning for many industries including legal, public health, vaccine supply chains, manufacturers, celebrities and many more,” read a statement by Eap, sent to Motherboard."

========

Zuckerberg unveils new Facebook feature aimed at helping people get their Covid vaccine

"In a message posted to the social media platform, Zuckerberg said that Facebook was launching a feature that will show users places nearby that are offering the shot, and will also help them make an appointment for it. The tool, part of the platform’s ‘Covid Information Center,’ could help “millions” of people make vaccination appointments, the CEO said. The tool will also be available on Instagram, which Facebook owns.

The company will also be working with health authorities and governments to develop chatbots that can register vaccination appointments via WhatsApp, another Facebook-owned platform. According to Zuckerberg, governments and nonprofits have already sent more than three billion messages providing information about the Covid-19 jab using official WhatsApp chatbots.

Zuckerberg also highlighted work that Facebook has done to weed out what it has described as misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines. He claimed that the social media platform has provided “authoritative” information about coronavirus to more than two billion people.

Doubling down on its efforts, Facebook will begin adding labels on posts about Covid-19 vaccines that will show additional information from the World Health Organization.

“The data shows the vaccines are safe and they work. They’re our best hope for getting past this virus and getting back to normal life. I’m looking forward to getting mine, and I hope you are too,” Zuckerberg wrote.

However, there remains considerable controversy over fact-checking and other content policing on the social media platform. Facebook’s Chief Product Officer Chris Cox acknowledged in an interview that, while the company takes false claims “very seriously,” there remains “a huge gray area for people who have concerns” about the vaccine."

========

“TRUTH”: Discussion on “Abuse of Power” with RFK, Jr. and Naomi Wolf: Fighting for Our Constitutional Rights

"Highlights of their conversation include:

• We’re reaching a point reminiscent of what led to the American Revolution: People were willing to die rather than give up their rights.
• The Constitution wasn’t written for easy times but for emergencies such as the current COVID crisis.
• Arbitrary restrictions are being put in place by those abusing emergency powers at local, state and federal levels.
• In a free society, points are made and arguments won through free speech and open debate rather than censoring opinions that differ from ours.
• Authoritarianism has no place in medicine although most liberals are accepting edicts promoted by Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates.
• Direct-to-consumer advertising that started in 1997 marked the beginning of Pharma’s takeover of American media.
• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation neutralized once-independent media including The Guardian, NPR and public television through financial gifts.
• Democrats are leading the “biofascism” charge.
• There’s no science to back up the widespread suspension of our Constitutional rights.
• Non-partisan grassroots efforts are gaining momentum and can preserve our freedom and prevent totalitarian takeover."

========

Exposing the Founding Fathers and the US Constitution

"More than half of the selected delegates to the Convention were educated lawyers. The remaining were planters, merchants, physicians, and college professors. Not one member represented, in his immediate personal economic interests, the small farming or mechanic classes.  Most believed their property rights were adversely affected by the relatively “weak” Articles of Confederation government and thus they were highly economically motivated to reconstruct the system.   Thus the Founding Fathers reflected an extraordinary anti-majoritarian, i.e., explicitly anti-democratic bias.  This explains the Constitutional theme of preserving private property and commercial enterprises, controlled by a small minority, ultimately at the expense of human freedom and the health of the Commons.

“Founding Father” John Jay possessed a vision that “the people who own the country ought to govern it”.   This referred, of course, to those who owned land, slaves, and commercial enterprises. Jay also believed that the upper classes “were the better kind of people”, those “who are orderly and industrious, who are content with their situation and not uneasy in their circumstances”.

No less than 85 articles and essays, a collection of documents known as the Federalist Papers, were written in 1787-1788 to urge ratification of the newly drafted US Constitution. The authors were Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Aristocratic Hamilton possessed such contempt for commoners he declared that “the people are a ‘great beast’ that must be tamed . . . rebellious and independent farmers had to be taught, sometimes by force, that the ideals of the revolutionary pamphlets were not to be taken too seriously”.

The Constitution was never submitted to the public for ratification. Since no direct popular vote was even attempted, it is impossible to know what the popular sentiment was.

A considerable proportion of the adult white male population was prohibited from participating in the election of the delegates to the separate ratifying state conventions due to property and disqualifications for voting. Historian Charles A. Beard conjectures that of the estimated 160,000 who voted in the election of delegates for the various state conventions, not more than 100,000 favored adoption of the Constitution.

And of course, women, African slaves, the original Indigenous inhabitants, un-propertied white adult males, and white males under 21 had no vote at all. The 1790 Census counted a total United States population of 3.93 million persons: 3.2 million free and nearly 700,000 African slaves. But of the 3.2 million “free” persons, the vast majority were prohibited from voting. So, in effect, the approximately 100,000 propertied white males who may have favored adoption comprised but two-and-a-half percent of the population. So it cannot be said that the Constitution was “an expression of the clear and deliberate will of the whole people” nor of a majority of the adult males, nor at the outside, of one-fifth of them.  In essence, debtors, the poor and un-influential, women, Indigenous natives, slaves – the overwhelming majority of all human beings living in the 13 states of the Union at the time – were either opposed to the Constitution or were not allowed to register a formal, legal opinion."

There's a lot of Founder worship in the United States. This too often leads people to take uncritical stances. No human is perfect and no document is perfect. We would be wise to remember that.

========

J & J’s “One Shot and You’re Done Vaccine”:” A New “Experimental” COVID Vaccine. “We Need to Challenge J&J’s Reputation”

"A review of J&J’s rap sheet over the past three decades presents a dire and contrary image that should lead us to question the company’s claims about its Covid-19 vaccine given the lucrative market the pandemic has created for the most aggressive medical corporations.

Similar to its equally over-sized competitors Glaxo, Merck and Pfizer, J&J too has had to pay out billions of dollars over the decades for civil settlements and criminal activities.  As the pharmaceutical giant receives applause across the mainstream media for the release and FDA emergency approval for its Covid-19 vaccine, Brazil’s Public Prosecution Service started an investigation into J&J’s antitrust activities under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for “possible improper payments in its medical device industry.” This was part of an FBI bribery scheme investigation that included Seimens, General Electric and Philips acting as a larger cartel to illegally payoff government officials in return for securing contracts with Brail’s national health programs.  The charges also include price gouging, inflating prices up to 800 percent the market price to cover bribes.

...

As one of the world’s leading medical device companies, J&J has had its share of recalls for faulty products including contact lenses and hip implants  In 2013, it paid nearly $2.5 billion to compensate 8,000 recipients for its flawed hip implants  Again in 2016, another $1 billion was awarded to plaintiffs injured from this device.

One particular dubious activity the company became involved with in 2008 was to launch a “phantom recall.”  When its Motrin IB caplets were discovered to not properly dissolve, it hired outside contractors to buy up store supplies in order to avoid making public declaration. No one would have known of this activity and it would have gotten past the eyes of FDA inspectors had the deception not been exposed during a Congressional investigation.

...

Finally, we might ask why a 140 year old company, with no history whatsoever in vaccine development, has now become among the heroes in the immunological war against Covid-19?  J&J is not a household name in the vaccine industry. It is utterly absent, let alone ranks among the world’s 20 major vaccine makers. Among the 53 vaccines for other infections approved and licensed by the CDC, not one is manufactured by the nation’s leader in mouthwash and baby powder.  It is therefore no surprise that the company had to partner with Merck to manufacture its Covid vaccine to meet demand. It has no history or expertise in this medical field.

...

Finally, there is a disturbing question that we have no certain answer for. How is it that a drug and household health product company, with no prior history in vaccine development, can develop and rush to market its first vaccine against a viral strain that was only identified 14 months ago? Developing a vaccine requires many years and necessitates the establishment of an R&D infrastructure vastly different than conventional drug development.  The other major companies developing Covid-19 vaccines have been in the business for decades. But not J&J. There is something more to this story that demands investigation.  And if the company’s long rap sheet offers any warning, it is that we must be wary of any claims J&J publicly states about the efficacy and safety of its products. Especially when the pandemic promise to increase the profits of numerous shareholders."

========

Judge authorizes Burbank to cut power to Tinhorn Flats Saloon & Grill

"The city of Burbank, California took extreme measures to force a local restaurant to close its doors. On Friday, a judge ruled the city could cut the power to the Tinhorn Flats Saloon and Grill because they continued to offer outdoor dining in defiance of a court order to shut down.

The restaurant’s attorney argued the city was shutting down a business and stripping its owners of their livelihood without sufficient notice. The city had revoked the bar’s health and conditional use permit as well."

========

Until Lambs Become Lions

"We are locked in a zero-sum game rebellion of the elites, who are intent on fundamentally transforming America into an authoritarian state with a single ideology and ruling class.

In order to defeat this rebellion, we need to understand the terrain we are operating on and the strategy and tactics of our enemy. Even more important, we need a strategy of our own to guide our struggle and return to a functional representative government, bounded by the Constitution with the power fully vested in the people. Only a few decades ago, American politics was driven by shared interests of prosperity and well-being aligned with a free constitutional republic. We need to drive from the American consciousness the current docile acceptance of the fact that America has a ruling class—or a ruling elite—and we must banish these terms to the trash heap of racial epithets and aristocratic garbage.

...

Over the last few years, traditional Americans have watched, stunned, as their country makes a national descent into a post-truth, post-justice, post-American society. They find it hard to believe; society appears unmoored and events surreal. Why? Because they are the targets of an effective information operations campaign that, as in Isaiah 5:20, calls evil good and trades bitter for sweet. In fact, we are embroiled in asymmetric political warfare.

...

We arrived in our current situation because our ruling elites painstakingly prepared the battleground in advance. In 2012, they amended the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act to permit the domestic dissemination of government propaganda into American newsfeeds.

In 2015, they passed the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Act, which created a cottage industry of government-funded, progressive-leaning CVE consultants and think tanks dedicated to pushing the myth of right-wing “domestic extremism” and “white supremacy.”  Employing teachers, healthcare professionals, first responders, and community leaders, the Obama-era CVE mania built a federally controlled and funded local surveillance and intelligence collection apparatus that spans from grade schools to the workplace to the doctor’s office. An apparatus that still uses debunked pseudoscience to classify ordinary Americans’ constitutionally protected speech and activities as “pre-terrorism indicators.”

Under the pretext of keeping us safe, they passed multiple counterterrorism laws such as the 2001 USA Patriot Act, the 2015 USA Freedom Act, and the various FISA Amendment Acts (2008, 2017, 2018, 2020), which, taken together, authorize warrantless mass surveillance of all American’s communications, activities, associations, and business transactions.

In addition to these legislative actions, Americans became apathetic and lost the will to hold their government leaders accountable. The multi-tier justice system under which we now suffer has been years in the making. According to a 2019 Pew Research Center analysis, of the 79,704 total federal defendants in the year 2018, fewer than one percent went to trial and were acquitted. The vast majority were coerced into plea bargains as a result of prosecutors stacking charges, a practice of bringing large numbers of often redundant charges against a defendant in order to force a guilty plea. Many defendants, facing decades behind bars from the stacked charges, take a plea agreement even when innocent instead of going to trial and gambling on the meager acquittal rate.

...

Traditional Americans need a political movement, and that movement needs an agenda. Agendas define the movement, its people, and its principles. It’s not enough to just be against something, people need to know what they’re fighting and sacrificing for. Agendas serve to keep a movement on the right track by functioning as a guide for decentralized political action. A political movement’s agenda should be simple and concise … if you can’t fit the agenda on the back of a postcard, you don’t have a political movement, you have a cult.

An agenda should be inclusive. Not in the HR department sense, but in the John Connor sense of “If you’re listening to this [message], you are the resistance.” We need to welcome the disaffected from labor unions and academia who are repelled by the progressives’ authoritarian ideology. We should be proudly colorblind, with zero tolerance for critical race theory, cancel culture, and identity politics.

...

The ruling elite have the power and they own the government and primary institutions in America. They are not going to give up this power without a fight, and we are not going to take back our country without suffering casualties along the way.

Expect ruling class institutions like the media, academia, and Big Tech to use “othering” tactics to smear and isolate traditional Americans in this struggle. Many will be falsely labeled extremists, insurrectionists, racists, and enemies of the state. Canceling and blacklisting will be the elite’s primary weapon and will result in job loss, financial depravations, and social isolation. The national security apparatus will be unleashed onto ordinary Americans who will then be arrested, imprisoned, or worse. As shocking as this sounds, this is how authoritarian regimes treat their undesirables, and you, by challenging their rule, will be declared an undesirable. These are the same things our founding fathers faced when they pursued independence from the crown.

We can counter these assaults on our liberty by organizing at the local and state level. By anticipating the actions of the ruling elite and their proxies, we can set up community outreach programs that mitigate their attempts to crush us. Shadow services, food banks, and employment networks can provide financial assistance and jobs to traditional Americans who get canceled or face financial hardships resulting from their political activism.

...

In the past, conservative and independent-minded Americans have believed that it is the individual’s responsibility to work hard, find a job, and make his way in society. The importance of individual responsibility versus the state’s welfare programs has always been a touchstone of this belief system. That was then, this is now. In this struggle, we traditional Americans need to help one another, have each other’s backs, and unite as a community. We need to use our collective strength and resources to protect and support our movement and its members. If we do this, we nullify the primary weapons the ruling elite can wield against us."

========

Pfizer Bullies Nations to Put Up Collateral for Lawsuits

"WION reports that Argentina and Brazil have rejected Pfizer’s demands. Initially, the company demanded indemnification legislation to be enacted, such as that which it enjoys in the U.S. Argentina proposed legislation that would restrict Pfizer’s financial responsibility for injuries to those resulting from negligence or malice.

Pfizer rejected the proposal. It also rejected a rewritten proposal that included a clearer definition of negligence. Pfizer then demanded the Argentinian government put up sovereign assets — including its bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings — as collateral. Argentina refused. A similar situation occurred in Brazil. Pfizer demanded Brazil:

1.    Waive sovereignty of its assets abroad in favor of Pfizer
2.    Not apply its domestic laws to the company
3.    Not penalize Pfizer for vaccine delivery delays
4.    Exempt Pfizer from all civil liability for side effects

Brazil rejected Pfizer’s demands, calling them “abusive.” As noted by WION, Pfizer developed its vaccine with the help of government funding, and now it — a private company — is demanding governments hand over sovereign assets to ensure the company won’t lose a dime if its product injures people, even if those injuries are the result of negligent company practices, fraud or malice.

...

In the U.S., vaccine makers already enjoy full indemnity against injuries occurring from this or any other pandemic vaccine under the PREP Act. If you’re injured, you’d have to file a compensation claim with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP),6 which is funded by U.S. taxpayers via Congressional appropriation to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

While similar to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP), which applies to nonpandemic vaccines, the CICP is even less generous when it comes to compensation. For example, while the NVICP pays some of the costs associated with any given claim, the CICP does not. This means you’ll also be responsible for attorney fees and expert witness fees.

...

CICP will only pay the difference between what your insurance covers and the total payout amount established for your case. For permanent disability, even $250,000 won’t go far. The CICP also has a one year statute of limitations, so you have to act quickly.

This too is a significant problem, as no one really knows what injuries might arise from the COVID-19 vaccine, or when, and this makes tying the injury to the vaccination a difficult prospect. Employers that mandate the COVID-19 vaccine will also be indemnified from liability for side effects. Instead, claims will be routed through worker’s compensation programs.

If the COVID-19 vaccines are as safe as the manufacturers claim, why do they insist on so much indemnification? Do they suspect or know something they’re refusing to admit publicly?"

========

Prison Guards Refusing Vaccine Despite COVID-19 Outbreaks

"A Florida correctional officer polled his colleagues earlier this year in a private Facebook group: “Will you take the COVID-19 vaccine if offered?”

The answer from more than half: “Hell no.” Only 40 of the 475 respondents said yes.

In Massachusetts, more than half the people employed by the Department of Correction declined to be immunized. A statewide survey in California showed that half of all correction employees will wait to be vaccinated. And in Iowa, early polling among employees showed a little more than half the staff said they’d get vaccinated.

...

...some correctional officers are refusing the vaccine because they fear both short- and long-term side effects of the immunizations. Others have embraced conspiracy theories about the vaccine. Distrust of the prison administration and its handling of the virus has also discouraged officers from being immunized. In some instances, correctional officers said they would rather be fired than be vaccinated.

...

Several correctional officers in Florida, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to talk to the press, said many of their colleagues believe that the vaccine could give them the virus. Some have latched onto debunked conspiracy theories circulating on social media, the officers said, believing the vaccine contains tracking devices produced by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, who has donated to coronavirus treatment research. (The vaccine does not contain tracking devices.) Others believe the vaccine was hastily produced without enough time to understand the long-term side effects."

The final quoted paragraph offers us a great example of propaganda in the wild. Note how they bury the totally legitimate and actually common concern (shared by average people & "experts") that the vaccine was hastily produced and we do not know the long term effects under a pile of more fringe views.

========

39-Year-Old Woman Dies 4 Days After Second Moderna Vaccine, Autopsy Ordered

"A 39-year-old woman from Ogden, Utah, died Feb. 5, four days after receiving a second dose of Moderna’s COVID vaccine, according to CBS affiliate KUTV.

Kassidi Kurill died of organ failure after her liver, heart and kidneys shut down. She had no known medical issues or pre-existing conditions, family members said.

...

Dr. Erik Christensen, Utah’s chief medical examiner, said proving vaccine injury as a cause of death almost never happens.

   “Did the vaccine cause this? I think that would be very hard to demonstrate in autopsy,” Christensen told KUTV.

Christensen could think of only one instance where a vaccine as the official cause of death would be seen on an autopsy report. That would be in the case of immediate anaphylaxis where someone received a vaccine and died almost instantaneously.

...

Last month The Defender reported on a 58-year-old woman who died hours after getting her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. State and federal officials said they were investigating her death but had not performed an autopsy.

On Feb. 5, officials said that they did not know the cause of Keyes’ death or any underlying conditions that could have contributed to her death, but there was “no evidence it was tied to the vaccine,” reported NBC News.

According to The Virginian Pilot, a public records request related to Keyes’ death revealed concerning emails. State Health Commissioner Norman Oliver told public information officers in a Feb. 5 email that if reporters asked whether an autopsy was done on Keyes, they should say “a full autopsy was not needed in order to ascertain whether the death was related to the vaccination.”

The public records request also revealed that officials inside and outside the health department were “concerned the death of Keyes, who is Black, could worsen vaccine hesitancy among minorities,” reported The Virginian Pilot.

...

The family was forced to get their own private autopsy. Keyes’ daughter said that even before state officials had her mother’s postmortem preliminary test results, the medical examiner’s office told her they would not perform an autopsy. They told her “nothing could be gleaned from an autopsy that would relate the vaccine to her death.”

State officials didn’t answer how medical examiners could thoroughly rule out other potential causes of death triggered by or linked to the shot without an internal examination of the body.

The CDC says no deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 vaccines. However, according to the latest data available from VAERS — which includes reports submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 26, 2021, a total of 1,265 deaths following COVID vaccines have been reported to the system."

========

When it comes to vaccines, suddenly “from vs with” matters again

"In the last few weeks the media has demonstrated one of the clearest, most concise displays of true-life doublethink I’ve ever seen. It truly is the perfect exemplar.

The dichotomy is in “covid deaths” vs “vaccine related injuries”.

As we all know by now, countries all around the world define “Covid deaths” as “people who die, of any cause, within 30 days of a positive test result” (the number of days changes by country, it’s usually between 28 and 60). This trend was started in Italy last spring, and spread all around the world.

Globally, with a few notable exceptions, a “covid death” is a death “from any cause” following a positive test.

And when they say “any cause”, they mean it. Up to, and including, shooting yourself in the head.

In one blackly hilarious case, a man “died of coronavirus” after being shot by the police, with his 7 gunshot wounds being listed as “complications”.

That’s how loosely defined “covid death” has become, it is more or less meaningless. However, Covid “vaccines”, and possible related injuries or deaths, are a very different matter.

The establishment is going out of its way to make sure everyone understands that anybody who gets ill, or dies, after being vaccinated, is absolutely NOT a “vaccine death”.

What’s hilarious is those same journalists and “experts” preaching against “Covid denial”, are now literally employing our own arguments against us in the name of defending the vaccines.

Check out this article from ABC a few weeks ago, quoting one doctor:

   We have to be very careful about causality. There are going to be spurious relationships, especially as the vaccine is targeting elderly or those with chronic conditions. Just because these events happen in proximity to the vaccine does not mean the vaccine caused these events. Nursing home centers and hospices are of particular concern, because they are homes to incredibly frail populations, and you have to look at the background rate of these events within those populations.”

You see, it’s important not take deaths out of context. After all, many of the people who die after being vaccinated are old and frail and already seriously ill. We need to be “careful about causation”, just because event B happened after event A, does not mean A caused B to happen.

In other words: There is a difference between with and from.

...

Essentially, if you die within two months of testing positive for Sars-Cov-2, you’re a “Covid death”, and if you die within two minutes of getting the vaccine, you’re a coincidence.

Now, that’s not to say the vaccine definitely did kill those unfortunate people, I don’t know the details of the cases. The point is the equivocation. The soft use of language which is totally at odds with the apocalyptic prose discussing “Covid deaths”.

...

If they want to define a “Covid death” as dying within 60 days of a positive test, fine. But then anyone who dies within two months of getting vaccinated is a “vaccine death”. And they should have those two big red numbers counting up, right next to each other, on the front page of every news website in the world.

And if they don’t do that – which they obviously won’t – then you have a deliberately employed double standard, and that is a tacit admission of intentional deception.

It really is just that simple."

========

The Threat to Academic Freedom: From Anecdotes to Data

"Progressive defenders of the status quo rightly point out that the total number of no-platformed academics represents little more than .01 percent of the total number of academics. They go on to claim that this proves that concern over progressive authoritarianism and low viewpoint diversity is nothing more than an opportunistic right-wing moral panic. My new report punctures this dishonest facade, exposing the pervasive structure of punishment, discrimination, and fear that underpins conformity to academia’s progressive sacred values and affects a majority of conservative academics.

Even if newsworthy incidents were the whole iceberg, there would still be cause for concern: would we so casually brush aside a few incidents of blatant anti-black or anti-Muslim exclusion? Yet something vastly more consequential lies beneath the surface. Universities are supposedly institutions dedicated to questioning received wisdom and pursuing truth. Veritas, Latin for “truth,” is Harvard’s motto, not “social justice.” Yet today, the search for truth is increasingly subordinate to a totalising creed that views tackling unequal outcomes between race, gender, and sexual identity groups as its sacred mission and conservatives—or even centrists—as moral reprobates.

I could rely on painful and outrageous anecdotes of the Bret Weinstein, Charles Murray, or Kathleen Stock variety. However, as a social scientist, I think it’s also important to cite reliable and valid survey data which can lay the “just a few anecdotes” canard to rest. The report distinguishes between two forms of coercion: punishment and discrimination. The first represents what I term “hard authoritarianism” and consists of everything from a university firing an academic to a department head warning them through to colleagues bullying them. The second prong, “soft authoritarianism,” involves political discrimination, whether during hiring and promotion, or when refereeing a grant application or journal article.

...

The moral community is now self-reproducing. It is also self-radicalising. In addition to dissuading conservatives, this climate of opinion attracts and empowers radical activists. These actors drive ideological crusades, calling out dissenters for blaspheming the sacred values of the ideological regime. Ideological homogeneity, as Cass Sunstein and John Ellis show, empowers extremists who exemplify shared values rather than producing an exchange of ideas that leads to a productive middle ground. Meanwhile, the paucity of conservatives weakens resistance to progressive intolerance, permitting radical innovators to establish illiberal policies such as “decolonizing the curriculum” or compelled diversity statements while instilling fear into potential dissenters. The moral community has become a closed system, reproducing itself, and becoming more radical over time. Heretics exist, but must remain under cover.

This doesn’t mean there is no limit to radical infiltration. The supply of radicals who can publish in established top journals is finite. Methodological rigour helps ensure that most academics remain moderate even if they nod to progressive enthusiasms. As in contemporary China, most feel that their freedom is relatively unaffected because they do not seek to challenge the regime. The moderate-left academic majority may well wonder what all the fuss is about. “How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is known to have remarked.

...

The first point to note is that thousands of academics have experienced disciplinary action for things they have written or said in research, teaching, or in public or private meetings. Across these measures, three to nine percent of the overwhelmingly left-leaning British UCU and EU academics report being disciplined or threatened for their views. Eleven percent of the UCU academics in Britain report being disciplined on at least one dimension. Fourteen percent of left-wing academics in my North American surveys report being disciplined on at least one dimension. While ideological conflict is a factor, factional and methodological disputes, as well as personality conflicts, can also produce hard authoritarianism.

Even so, what is noteworthy is that conservatives report an elevated level of punishment compared to other academics. One-in-three conservative academics and PhD students in the US say they have been charged or threatened with disciplinary action on at least one dimension. The situation is especially dire among conservative PhD students in North America, who report very high levels of administrative threat—from 20 to 38 percent on each of five dimensions, with 83 percent reporting threat on at least one. To surmount my small sample of 43 conservative academics and 40 conservative graduate students, I polled members of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), an organisation whose membership in my sample is 60 percent conservative. While there is self-selection of academics concerned with academic freedom into the NAS, the fact that 46 percent say they have been charged or threatened on at least one dimension provides, alongside my other samples, further evidence of higher punishment levels for conservatives.

...

No-platforming and dismissal campaigns have become frequent only recently. The NAS reports 65 new incidents in 2020, a fivefold increase over the preceding year, while the FIRE disinvitations database shows a big rise in left-motivated no-platformings beginning in 2015. However, this shouldn’t blind us to the more severe longstanding problems stemming from political discrimination and lower-level disciplinary action.

Here it is worth remembering that American campus speech codes, nearly 90 percent of which are unconstitutional, began to be enacted in the late 1980s, when the phrase “political correctness” first emerged. We shouldn’t make the mistake of imagining that the current upsurge of intolerance is a new fad that will pass, like McCarthyism, from the scene. Rather, it is a deeply embedded feature of today’s dominant ideology, left-modernism, which has become progressively institutionalised since the late 1960s. Academic illiberalism is arguably in its sixth decade, and has been a feature of elite universities for four decades.

While hard authoritarianism in the form of punishment is one arm of the system, political discrimination arguably poses a more pervasive threat. Using a concealed list technique, I found that 40 percent of American academics wouldn’t hire a known Trump supporter, rising to 45 percent among Canadian academics. One-in-three British academics wouldn’t hire a known Brexit supporter. Trump was elected president with nearly half the popular vote in 2016. Brexit passed 52–48 on a 72 percent turnout. The fact these mainstream views are deemed grounds for discrimination is disconcerting.

...

These results may appear to indicate that academics, or leftists, are uniquely biased. However, there is plenty of research to indicate that political discrimination is a widespread feature of our society. Using a survey of college-educated workers in Britain, and comparing it with my surveys of academics, I found that the willingness of conservatives to discriminate against leftists, and vice-versa, was similar among Left and Right, both inside and outside academia. Nevertheless, that survey also found that employees in universities were far more likely than degree-holders in other sectors to say that Brexit supporters would not be comfortable expressing their views to colleagues. What explains the higher chilling effect in universities?

The problem lies partly with the fact that people’s views are transparent in their work in SSH fields, and partly in the extreme political skew of academia. For instance, in my UK survey, supporters of right-wing parties among SSH academics were outnumbered 7:1 by supporters of left or liberal parties, and in my North American surveys by a whopping 14:1. The latter is quite close to the 11.5:1 Democrat-to-Republican voter registration ratio unearthed by Mitchell Langbert and colleagues in an exhaustive sample of current faculty in the top 60 American universities for History, Journalism/Communications, Law, Economics, and Psychology. This is especially so when Economics (at 4.5:1) is excluded (I excluded Economics from my SSH category).

When the Left outnumbers the Right 14:1, it doesn’t matter that right-wing academics are discriminating at equal rates to their leftist counterparts. The aggregate effect of two-way discrimination hits the Right far more, and my academic surveys show that discrimination in favour of left-leaning applications and papers often cancels out discrimination against them. This leads to self-censorship on the Right but not on the Left. No wonder studies of legal scholarship find that the work of registered Republican academics cannot be identified by coders, whereas that of Democrats often can be because they openly espouse their values in their work.

The result of punishment and discrimination is hostility and self-censorship, which deters political minorities such as conservatives from pursuing an academic career....

...

Academic freedom and viewpoint diversity seem to be caught in a downward spiral as conformity to the left-modernist values of the moral community on campus stifles the university’s truth-seeking mission. How can we break this spiral and free the university? Only external intervention from government, in my view, can reverse the damage.

In a separate article published soon after my report’s release, which may be read as a policy chapter to the report, I distinguish two approaches to reform; libertarian and interventionist. Libertarian actors such as the Heterodox Academy, FIRE, the Academic Freedom Alliance, and the Free Speech Union believe that legal advice, free speech rankings, lawsuits, and public information campaigns can revive the free speech culture and lead liberal actors to vote with their feet for openness, incentivising universities to change.

While such efforts are vital, and these organisations are correct that academic freedom will only truly be safe when there is a consensus in favour of the free speech culture, my report suggests that threats to academic freedom on campus are likely to increase as younger cohorts enter the ranks of academia. This means more pressure from activists on universities to curb academic freedom. A reactive approach in which dissenters must engage in costly and time-consuming legal battles effectively concedes defeat. “The punishment is the process” and a defensive stance is a “recipe for failure,” notes a University of Texas professor. Accusers are free to try their hand again and again, no matter how often the accused escapes punishment. The result is a chill on prospective dissent and self-censorship, fulfilling the aim of the left-modernist speech police.

The only means of resisting this is to open the university to scrutiny from government, in line with the law, which is accountable to voters, the media, and the courts in a way backroom university meetings and tribunals are not. Society is not merely composed of the government and citizens, with government the only threat to liberty. There is also an intermediate layer of institutions, such as universities, corporations, or organised religion, which can threaten liberty. In these cases, government intervention protects the freedom of citizens, even if it infringes on institutional autonomy for a time. The federal government’s forced de-segregation of southern universities in the early 1960s to protect the liberty of black citizens is good example of this. Libertarian purists who reflexively react against “government” wind up serving as the useful idiots of left-modernist authoritarianism.

...

In the US and Canada, federal and provincial or state laws have either focused on abstract free speech policies which have little practical impact on everyday practices in universities, as in Ontario and Alberta, or are incoherent in their defence of academic freedom, as in many Republican-controlled states. Attention has too often focused exclusively on a few no-platforming incidents. Consistency should be the watchword. You cannot enforce a speech code defining anti-Semitism more tightly than the law, as has occurred under the Trump administration in America or the Ford premiership in Ontario, and simultaneously hope to be taken seriously when arguing against similar codes for transphobia or racism. Mooting affirmative action to promote the hiring of conservatives, as South Dakota seems to have done, is similarly illiberal unless tied to an argument over equivalent action with other forms of equality and diversity. Similarly, attacks on tenure, as in Iowa, or the banning of non-compulsory courses on Critical Race Theory (CRT), as in New Hampshire, Georgia, and Oklahoma, run contrary to principles of academic freedom. CRT should be prohibited only when made compulsory and taught in an uncritical manner. State legislative action has done some good by banning free speech zones, but future activity needs to be consistent, principled, and proactive to target the problem. In this regard, the UK model is one that other jurisdictions should follow.

Few people think that the desegregation of southern universities, or the British government’s takeover of Islamist-controlled public schools in Britain, was a bad idea. With patient and principled regulation, public universities can be freed from their current spiral, allowing them to return to their truth-seeking mission. Private universities that accept public money can also be incentivised to be liberal. This will safeguard academic freedom for political minorities, improving the production of knowledge and the student experience while enabling the conversations that can heal our growing political divisions."

========

The Hidden Truth Behind the Too-Good-to-be True COVID-19 Vaccines: An Interview with Dr. Ronald B. Brown, PhD

"On February 26, 2021, the peer-reviewed journal Medicina published another paper by Brown as part of a special issue, “Pandemic Outbreak of Coronavirus.” Brown’s paper, titled “Outcome reporting bias in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials” is also listed in the U.S. National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health.

In Brown’s first coronavirus paper, he showed how mistaking infection fatality rates for case fatality rates exaggerated the predicted lethality of the SAR-CoV-2 virus. In this second paper, he shows how relative risk reduction measures are being used to exaggerate the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.

I’ve read the latest paper two-and-half times (but only claim to understand 90% of it). The overall conclusion, however, seems clear to me: The COVID-19 vaccine trials, in fact, only showed a negligible reduction in risk of acquiring a symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection; not the near perfect immunization the media is portraying.

As Dr. Brown writes in the paper’s conclusion:

   Such examples of outcome reporting bias mislead and distort the public’s interpretation of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine efficacy and violate the ethical and legal obligations of informed consent.

The following is an informal interview I conducted with Dr. Brown, from his office in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. It offers a layman’s interpretation of his findings and conclusions.

...

Today, we are nowhere near possessing knowledge that is beyond reasonable doubt concerning infectious viral diseases like COVID-19. Yet, as draconian public health mitigation measures are imposed on society with little proof of effectiveness, and much proof of collateral damage, there is little debate covered in the commercial media about public health issues. In my opinion, public health officials and politicians are under pressure to do something to protect the public, even if they have no idea what actually works. They see an open debate in the media as something that weakens their power and control.

There are other issues. The world copied China’s mitigation measures because China’s reported case rates are so low. But China’s rates are low because they use different case definitions than we do. If you want to instantly reduce cases of a disease, change the case definition. I have written about this in more detail in a new manuscript undergoing peer review. Also, we have a multitude of genomic sequencing technicians who are newly sequencing every common cold virus and variant they can find. Their findings are often translated immediately by public health officials, without sufficient vetting by epidemiologists who can put the information into proper context and prevent hysterical overreactions by public health officials and politicians.

...

People can’t depend solely on the “approved” experts to tell them if the evidence is sufficient or not. We have so-called public health experts already telling us that now and look at the results. Experts from all sides must be given a fair hearing to present their case to the public and defend their case against the cases presented by other experts. It may be that pieces of evidence must be synthesized together from many sources to arrive at the final truth. That is the method I use to conduct my research. I look for pieces of evidence from a variety of research literature to synthesize together into a logical explanation or evidence-based theory (see Breakthrough knowledge synthesis in the Age of Google, 2020). If someone else presents additional evidence that refutes or proves my theory wrong, then everyone benefits and scientific knowledge advances.

...

The reduced risk of COVID-19 infection reported by the manufacturers is approximately 95%, which is an accurate relative risk reduction measure. However, missing from the vaccine reports are absolute risk reduction measures which are much more clinically relevant to the reduced risk of COVID-19 infection. The absolute risk reduction of the vaccines in the present critical appraisal is approximately 1%, indicating practically no clinical efficacy or usefulness of the vaccines to reduce COVID-19 infection.

...

For applied clinical and public health interventions, yes, they appear to be almost completely ineffective. The members of the FDA advisory committee overlooked FDA guidelines to include absolute reduction measures when reporting clinical trial outcomes to the public, leading to outcome reporting bias in the FDA’s authorization of the mRNA vaccines.

...

The FDA guidelines say to report both RRRs and ARRs to the public, but the FDA advisory committees ignored the guidelines when they authorized the COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use, and they left out the ARRs. The New England Journal of Medicine also did not include ARRs when it published the clinical trial data for the vaccines....

...

...My article shows that clinical trials of influenza vaccines have a 1.4% ARR compared to the usual 40% to 60% RRRs reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

...

Some people may point out that 1% of a million vaccinated people are still 10,000 prevented symptomatic infections. Fair enough; then report a 1% reduction and see how many people are still interested in getting the vaccine. Furthermore, there is no reliable evidence that even a reported 1% reduction is valid. For example, normal saline solutions used in the placebo groups are associated with fevers and other symptoms common to coronavirus infections. The credibility of the entire enterprise is compromised.

...

This type of outcome reporting bias violates the public’s legal and ethical right to informed consent about the true efficacy of the vaccines. Regardless if you are provax or antivax or are undecided, you have a right to all the facts to inform your personal opinion and choice. Bottomline: you have before you smoking-gun evidence of a huge public health scandal — if the word ever gets out! This problem has been ongoing for decades and really took off when the pharmaceutical companies were granted permission to advertise directly to consumers in the 1980s. Think of all the systematic reviews of clinical trials that could be compromised by this type of clinical trial outcome reporting bias.

...

Fauci and I obviously don’t see eye to eye. In a recent interview about the AZT clinical trials for AIDS, Fauci described what to do if the efficacy of a treatment “has not yet reached statistical significance.” Fauci’s quick-fix solution is that “the data needs to be further analyzed.” I don’t know of any other data analysis method that increases statistical significance as quickly as relative risk reduction measures. The public should be cautious of modern day snake-oil salesmen. Characters like that make a buck by filling people with fear and then selling a worthless quick-fix remedy to them. In my opinion, that’s exactly what’s happening in this pandemic."

========

Let’s Stop Pretending Russia and China Are Military Threats

"Let’s get real. The US military is the biggest threat to the future of the United States. It’s ravenous appetite for ever more money, which Congress obliges year after year, is gobbling up almost the entire discretionary budget of the federal government — an amount which, even if you just count the official numbers represents half of the total tax collection of the government each year.

A great example of this is the F-35 nuclear-capable fighter bomber, a $1.7-trillion dollar boondoggle which now, mid-way through its production process, the Pentagon admits is a complete failure as an aircraft, unreliable, incapable of flying at supersonic speed as it destroys its “stealth” coating, too heavy to engage other planes in aerial dogfights, and a danger to pilots because of avionics that are unreliable. It is likely to end up in a very expensive scrap heap and nobody is being blamed for this epic waste.

If we were actually concerned about national security, we would slash the US military by 90 percent and its budget by the same amount, bring all the ships and troops home from those 800 overseas bases, get out of all the conflicts into which the government injects our military — usually illegally—and start taking care of this country, which is, from the stand point of education, environment, health care, infrastructure, economy, and democratic governance in pretty sad shape.

Anyone who has traveled to Europe or Asia can attest that in many countries one feels like a visitor from the Third World. The US has abilities — like the landing of the Perseverance Rover on Mars — but meanwhile Japanese and Chinese people whisk between cities on smooth-as-glass high-speed trains while Europeans get their health care delivered free at point of service, mostly covered by taxes paid by all, get six or more weeks of paid vacation and retire without a suffering plunge in living standard.

Lets us US citizens smarten up and start figuring out who our real enemies are. Guess what? They’re right here at home, not in Beijing or Moscow, and the biggest one is a big five-sided building across the Potomac River from the Lincoln monument."