THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE

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THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE

Category Archives: Politics

What Happens to Florida if DeSantis Loses ?

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Everyone’s moving to Florida — if not Texas. I get it. Florida has a lot to offer. But the desire of rational patriots to move to Florida rests heavily on the presence of a rational governor — Ron DeSantis. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that he might go away. But he could. It doesn’t matter what a majority wants. We saw that in Georgia, right? We know Donald Trump probably won Georgia, as did the two Republican U.S. Senate candidates. It didn’t matter.

Is it plausible to assume that the entire leftist-political-cultural cabal that forced Donald Trump out of the White House might do the same to Ron DeSantis? I certainly hope not. But you’re living in your head if you think it’s not plausible. Stacey Abrams and her army of frauds are undoubtedly even planning now how to accomplish what they have so far, since 2020, accomplished with a 100 percent success rate. You might say, “DeSantis controls the elections in Florida. He won’t let it happen.” I heard the same about Donald Trump. “He’s in the White House. Do you think he won’t use the federal government’s power to prevent widespread fraud?” All I can tell you is: Donald Trump is gone.

My point, as always, isn’t to be negative. It’s to be REALISTIC. At some point, those of us who still cherish our diminishing freedom will have to accept: Elections are not the answer. I don’t have a simple alternative for you. But with elections now being controlled nationally, and by evil persons (Zuckerberg, Dorsey, etc.) who control 95 percent of the flow of information in the world, elections might not be our best alternative.

So: If you live in Florida, or if you’re soon moving to Florida, what’s your plan — if DeSantis loses? And a socialist-Communist-woke Democrat takes over the Sunshine State?

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The End of Basic Education: Biden Issues Universal Public School Critical Race Theory Order

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The Biden Department of Education has quietly proposed a new rule prioritizing the use of federal tax dollars for K-12 schools that replace traditional education with “culturally responsive teaching and learning” – more commonly referred to as critical race theory. This is the most significant move by the federal government to redefine the nature of state-funded public schools in U.S. history.

Although the current effort to push public schools receiving federal funding to adopt a detailed indoctrination agenda may feel new and overwhelming for parents, the truth is that the Biden attempt is simply the last phase in a decades-long effort to control local schools and press the progressive agenda on our children. With the power of taxpayer-funded purse strings, the federal government sends a message to public schools that if they want financial aid they must “teach” critical race theory and prioritize its ideologically anti-American, anti-traditional agenda over traditional education.

Under Obama, public schools were thrust into the controversial world of Common Core, a series of federal mandates that included “awareness education” involving a progressive view of race, gender, and so-called “equity” (not to be confused with “equality”).

Under Biden, a far more aggressive level of federal control over our nation’s K-12 classrooms will replace history (and objective truth) with identity politics and a warped view of American civics and institutions. In many cases, teachers are told to hide the racially divisive curriculum from parents. In others, students are encouraged to report the words and views of their parents and caretakers as examples of institutional racism. The initial goal is the indoctrination of young minds, but the long view is to aggregate power behind an alien political worldview that fed the dehumanizing machines of the Soviet Union and communist China.

At its core, critical race theory is the false idea that the United States is a fundamentally racist country and that all of our nation’s institutions – the law, culture, business, economy, education – are designed to maintain white supremacy. Politicians and pundits market critical race theory as inclusive teaching, one that promotes understanding and tolerance. When the truth is exposed, they try to repackage it in a series of euphemisms, including anti-racism, equity, or culturally responsive teaching. But the “scholars,” like Ibram X. Kendi and the 1619 Project behind the related anti-racist rhetoric proposed in the rule – the true believers – admit the truth.

Critical race theory curriculum tells students that they fall into one of two categories – the oppressed or the oppressor – based solely on the color of their skin. It tells students that if they are white then they are privileged and racist, and makes them affirm this ideology through classroom discussion and assignments. Some school districts take it even a step further and physically segregate students based on their race for lessons, reducing them to nothing more than a set of racial stereotypes.

This is not healthy. It erases decades of progress. And it pits our children against each other, teaching them to hate one another. Parents must stay alert because this week’s proposed rule is just the beginning. Senate and House Democrats have already introduced bills, including the Civics Secures Democracy Act, which would require schools to promote critical race theory in exchange for more federal money.

The go-for-broke approach of the Biden administration to upend bulwarks of the American constitutional republic, from Supreme Court-packing to open borders to emptying the public treasury to ensuring federal control of elections, reveals the true agenda: the consolidation of power. And nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in its drive to replace history, reading, and writing with noxious doctrine designed to replace both parental control and constitutional rule of law.

Kimberly Hermann is General Counsel for Southeastern Legal Foundation, an Atlanta-based constitutional public interest law firm and policy center. Kim is committed to promoting individual liberty, the rule of law, and accountability in government. She advances these principles through litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts.

Rule by Fiat: When Government does What it Wants

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“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” — Ayn Rand

Rule by brute force.

That’s about as good a description as you’ll find for the sorry state of our nation.

SWAT teams crashing through doors. Militarized police shooting unarmed citizens. Traffic cops tasering old men and pregnant women for not complying fast enough with an order. Resource officers shackling children for acting like children. Homeowners finding their homes under siege by police out to confiscate lawfully-owned guns. Drivers having their cash seized under the pretext that they might have done something wrong.

The list of abuses being perpetrated against the American people by their government is growing rapidly.

We are approaching critical mass.

The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the government—or whoever happens to be calling the shots at the time—thinks. And if the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.

In effect, you will disappear.

Our freedoms are already being made to disappear.

We have seen this come to pass under past presidents with their use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements.

President Biden’s long list of executive orders, executive actions, proclamations and directives is just more of the same: rule by fiat.

Now the Biden Administration is setting its sights on gun control.

Mark my words: gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats, will become yet another means by which to subvert the Constitution and sabotage the rights of the people.

These laws, growing in popularity as a legislative means by which to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others, are yet another Trojan Horse, a stealth maneuver by the police state to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

Nineteen states and Washington DC have red flag laws on their books.

That number is growing.

As The Washington Post reports, these laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”

In the midst of what feels like an epidemic of mass shootings (the statistics suggest otherwise), these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.

Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.

Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.

With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats… to “stop dangerous people before they act.”

While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

We’ve been down this road before.

Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.

This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.

This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

Let that sink in a moment.

Now consider the ramifications of giving police that kind of authority: to preemptively raid homes in order to neutralize a potential threat.

It’s a powder keg waiting for a lit match.

Under these red flag laws, what happened to Duncan Lemp—who was gunned down in his bedroom during an early morning, no-knock SWAT team raid on his family’s home—could very well happen to more people.

At 4:30 a.m. on March 12, 2020, in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that had most of the country under a partial lockdown and sheltering at home, a masked SWAT team—deployed to execute a “high risk” search warrant for unauthorized firearms—stormed the suburban house where 21-year-old Duncan, a software engineer and Second Amendment advocate, lived with his parents and 19-year-old brother.

The entire household, including Lemp and his girlfriend, was reportedly asleep when the SWAT team directed flash bang grenades and gunfire through Lemp’s bedroom window.

Lemp was killed and his girlfriend injured.

No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, had a criminal record.

No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, was considered an “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, at least not according to the search warrant.

So what was so urgent that militarized police felt compelled to employ battlefield tactics in the pre-dawn hours of a day when most people are asleep in bed, not to mention stuck at home as part of a nationwide lockdown?

According to police, they were tipped off that Lemp was in possession of “firearms.”

Thus, rather than approaching the house by the front door at a reasonable hour in order to investigate this complaint—which is what the Fourth Amendment requires—police instead strapped on their guns, loaded up their flash bang grenades and acted like battle-crazed warriors.

This is the blowback from all that military weaponry flowing to domestic police departments.

This is what happens when you use SWAT teams to carry out routine search warrants.

This is what happens when you adopt red flag gun laws, which Maryland did in 2018, painting anyone who might be in possession of a gun—legal or otherwise—as a threat that must be neutralized.

Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally where the burden of proof is reversed and you are guilty before you are given any chance to prove you are innocent.

Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.

Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.

In fact, U.S. police agencies have been working to identify and manage potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats for some time now.

All you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States.

Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

You will be tracked wherever you go.

You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

The government has been building its pre-crime, surveillance network in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

To that noxious mix, add in a proposal introduced under the Trump Administration and being considered by Biden for a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) that will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.

It’s the American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick all rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

Connect the dots.

Start with the powers amassed by the government under the USA Patriot Act, note the government’s ever-broadening definition of what it considers to be an “extremist,” then add in the government’s detention powers under NDAA, the National Security Agency’s far-reaching surveillance networks, and fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

To that, add tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that will identify and track you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the picture, toss in the real-time crime centers being deployed in cities across the country, which will be attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

Hopefully you’re starting to understand how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat for a variety of reasons that run the gamut from mental illness to having a military background to challenging its authority to just being on the government’s list of persona non grata. Finally, add in the local police agencies and SWAT teams that are being “gifted” military-grade weaponry and equipment designed for the battlefield and trained in the tactics of war.

It all adds up to a terrifying package of brute force coupled with invasive technology and totalitarian tactics.

This brings me back to those red flag gun laws.

In the short term, these gun confiscation laws may serve to temporarily delay or discourage those wishing to inflict violence on others, but it will not resolve whatever madness or hate or instability therein that causes someone to pull a trigger or launch a bomb or unleash violence on another.

Indeed, those same individuals sick enough to walk into an elementary school or a movie theater and open fire using a gun can and do wreak just as much havoc with homemade bombs made out of pressure cookers and a handful of knives.

Nor will these laws save us from government-instigated and directed violence at the hands of the militarized police state or the blowback from the war-drenched, violence-imbued, profit-driven military industrial complex, both of which remain largely overlooked and underestimated pieces of the discussion on gun violence in America.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, in the long term, all these gun confiscation laws will do is ensure that when the police state finally cracks down, “we the people” are defenseless in the face of the government’s arsenal of weapons.

No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes. In this way, even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

Red flag laws and gun control legislation are no less a threat to our freedoms.

John Whitehead

What the George Floyd Matter Reminds Us About Leftism

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We have to remember a few things. Leftists do not care about justice. Justice applies to the individual. Leftist notions of “social justice” sacrifice the individual to society (in theory) and to the brutality of the state (in practice). Leftists do not care about racism. They ARE racists. They suggest that race is the defining and only important attribute of an individual; that the individual has no identity, no freedom of choice, no unique characteristics — only DNA. THIS IS RACISM.

Leftism is not a mixture of right and wrong, or good and bad, as most philosophies and ideologies are. Leftism, especially the Communist-woke type overwhelmingly dominating our culture today, is raw, undiluted, uncompromising and irredeemable evil.

Also, from Tucker Carlson:

It’s that simple: violent protests get results. That’s a threat, obviously. But it’s also, unfortunately true. Rioting does work. When you burn cities, you get what you want. You get rich from corporate handouts. You get the jury verdicts you’ve demanded. Rioters know this very well, even if the rest of us won’t admit it. By allowing Wendy’s to be torched and Macy’s to be looted and police stations to be destroyed, the rest of us have relinquished our power as citizens and instead handed it to the most violent, unreasonable, and least productive people in the country. Why would we do something like this? Maybe historians will be able to explain it. In the meantime prepare for the next phase. But, once again, don’t kid yourself. Derek Chauvin’s conviction didn’t settle accounts. It merely increased the debt.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Why Maxine Waters Wanted a Mistrial

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When Maxine Waters called for people in the streets of Minnesota to be more active and confrontational if Derek Chauvin were to be acquitted, like many, I thought she had handed a gift to the defense on appeal.   In some ways, she did.  We all heard Judge Cahill describe her behavior as abhorrent, and, while he didn’t think her remarks mattered in terms of the evidence and jury deliberations, he was unequivocal that her actions likely provided the defense with the basis for a mistrial at the appellate level and could well result in the case being thrown out.  Why, if that’s what he thought, didn’t the judge declare a mistrial himself? 

Some might say it’s because he didn’t want to try the case again, but I think he didn’t want to be “that guy” responsible for letting Chauvin off the hook and reaping the wrath of a good part of the country that had long promised to burn it all down.  Why bear that burden himself and potentially subject his family to violence when it’s so much easier to pass the buck to the appellate court?

We also have to question why someone as politically experienced as Maxine Waters would so brazenly deliver a message of incitement, knowing the optics and, more importantly, that her words and conduct would only serve the interests of the defense in claiming that this was textbook intimidation of both judge and jury.  Why would a ruthless, calculating, lifelong professional left-wing s—kicker like Waters knowingly cross state lines to, if not incite, certainly agitate for continued unrest on America’s streets?

Because without an acquittal or a mistrial — either of which would have unquestionably given rise to increased violence — Rep. Waters and most Democrats actually want the bedlam to continue.  After all,  racializing everything by pointing fingers at the straw men of white supremacy; white privilege; and the conveniently invisible and unmeasurable systemic, structural, and internalized variants of racism is the bread and butter of the Democrats.  Without it, they have no raison d’être. 

Had Maxine kept her mouth shut, a simple conviction without a strong basis for a mistrial on appeal would cut short the mayhem in the streets.  A pause in the bedlam is not good for the left, whose entire existence and justification is predicated on being the party of racializing everything — especially relationships between black communities and white cops.  On the other hand, a conviction accompanied by overt threats of violence reeking of jury intimidation, from a political figure, keeps alive the likelihood of a mistrial on appeal and could extend the rioting all the way to the 2022 elections.  This is a tempting insurance policy that would allow the Democrats to continue to foment racial division and milk dry other white cop–black victim scenarios until their goals are reached of defunding the police, reimagining the criminal justice system, getting rid of police and replacing them with civilian security, eliminating bail, unleashing untold numbers of violent criminals back onto the streets, and disarming the public so they cannot protect their families. 

We like to think our justice system is fair, and usually it is — indeed, some believe that a guilty verdict on all three counts by a jury that was 50% white, presided over by a white judge, with several white prosecutors and a white defense attorney, is all the proof needed that “our system of justice works.”  That’s a legitimate assessment of our criminal justice system and one I’d like to embrace.  But you can equally argue that, if Chauvin was indeed guilty of one or more counts, there are aspects of how this trial was conducted that cast considerable doubt on whether it was fair and impartial.  The right verdict by a tainted process is as bad as a wrong verdict justly rendered.

Now that Chauvin has been found guilty, he will undoubtedly appeal, and a mistrial could be his fate, but not only because of Maxine’s incitement.  Even President Biden inappropriately weighed in while the jury was deliberating, hoping for a guilty verdict.  Since they weren’t sequestered, it is possible that the jurors heard these comments and were influenced by them — something that should have been asked of them to preserve the record for appeal.

During the jury selection process, the city of Minneapolis settled with the Floyd family for $27 million, sending a powerful message to the newly impaneled jury that guilt was a foregone conclusion.  The defense’s motion to sequester the jury, precisely to prevent this kind of influence on the jury and exposure to the press, was denied by Judge Cahill — a critical mistake in my opinion.  He also (astoundingly) denied the defense’s motion to change the venue and move the trial to a different jurisdiction to ensure an impartial jury and fair trial.  With unrelenting riots and protests in Minneapolis, and every major political figure from Governor Walz and A.G. Ellison on down to local mayors convicting  Chauvin in the court of public opinion, how could there possibly be a fair and impartial trial in Minnesota? 

Other forms of intimidation and influence on jurors include ongoing riots by BLM and Antifa activists and clearly biased media reports throughout the trial; the drive-by shooting of two National Guardsmen directly after Waters’s statement; the delivery of a severed pig’s head and smeared blood on the former abode of a defense witness in the style of The Godfather, in which the severed head of a treasured horse was placed in Jack Woltz’s bed, sending the clear message that the Corleones meant business and he’d better watch his step; even the tracking down and harassment of a paramedic who donated $10 to Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense, by ABC reporter Jason Nguyen to allegedly “get his side of the story” — all of this could have intimidated any juror who saw it.  Nguyen also doxxed the paramedic on social media.  Like the pig’s head, the messaging is clear: if you stand with Floyd or Rittenhouse, you are being watched, and the next head might be yours.

This is the ugly underbelly of jury tampering and intimidation.  And it’s effective.  The judge and those twelve jurors knew that any verdict short of guilty could result in untold deaths and property damage from riots, as well as threats to their families.  No matter how devoted to their constitutional duty, it is tough to remain strong in the face of such jackboot tactics.

But the verdict wasn’t enough for many black activists, politicians, journalists, and pundits.  It isn’t enough that Derek Chauvin will spend the rest of his life in jail, if the inmates let him live.  Since racism is an invisible force that exists despite any evidence of its existence, these activists and their leaders in the Democrat Party aren’t going to rest until they, to quote New York BLM leader Hank Newsom, “burn it all down.”  And according to Auntie Maxine, they “mean business.”  They want the riots.  They want the hate and division.  They want to destroy white America and will deconstruct all of America in the process, in order to recreate a new America in their image — cleansed of white history, white culture, and white people.  I‘m devastated to have to say that, but at this point, can there be any doubt?

This is “revenge racism” — payback for hundreds of years of oppression.  Payback against whites who had nothing to do with our tainted history, who never did anything racist, and even whose ancestors had nothing to do with our history.  To quote again from The Godfather, it’s best served cold.  Nothing we are experiencing is an accident.  And while it all feels intensely hot, it is a cold and calculated series of events and policies designed to rend our country from the inside out.

I have no doubt that Maxine and the Democrats wanted a mistrial to justify continued violence.  Since they didn’t get it, the lure of a mistrial on appeal will provide them with months, possibly even years of racializing, dividing, and destroying.  They will continue to unleash criminals on helpless innocents of all colors, with no aid or comfort on the way, and no ability to defend themselves, and they will not rest until they blow up this shining city on a hill…and turn it into a hellhole.

Sally Zelikovski, American Thinker

Mob Rule is not Justice

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Don’t kid yourself. The conviction of Derek Chauvin isn’t a victory for justice. When members of Congress, the media and domestic terrorism groups threaten to burn down all of Minnesota unless they get the verdict they desire, that’s not a judicial system; it’s mob rule. This isn’t a comment on Chauvin’s guilt or innocence. It’s a comment on the fact that objective guilt or innocence are no longer relevant.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Glenn Greenwald Explains That the Presstitutes Lie Because That Is What the Audience Wants

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Do you remember the lie spread by the despicable lie machine, the NY Times, that officer Brian Sicknick was beat to death with a fire extinguisher by white supremacists at the “Trump Insurrection?”

Here is the lie as told by the NY Times:

“On Wednesday, pro-Trump rioters attacked that citadel of democracy, overpowered Mr. Sicknick, 42, and struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to two law enforcement officials. With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support. He died on Thursday evening.”

The two law enforcement officers do not exist. Sicknick was not hit with a fire extinguisher or rushed to the hospital with a bloody gash in his head. The story was a complete fabrication, and the NY Times knew it.

Every one of the presstitute scum went on and on about “Officer Brian Sicknick clubbed to death with a fire extingisher by Trump’s mob” (words of Nicholas Kristof, a professional liar for the NY Times and CNN). A complete lie became another false news fact spread all over the world.

All of this happened despite the fact that Sicknick’s family told the media that Brian was fine and had not been hit at all.

Sicknick did later die, but according to the District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner, “Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes” a day after the alleged beating. The autopsy found no blunt trauma to Sicknick’s head.

Glenn Greenwald points out that the presstitutes do not care about the facts, and neither does their audience. The audience wants to be lied to in order to have their emotion-based positions confirmed. The only purpose of the American media is to confirm the emotion-based hatred directed against white “systemic racist” Americans, Trump supporters, and the United States that has been programmed into the heads of blacks and white liberals by universities and the public school system. The presstitutes propagate the lies that sustain the emotion-based hatreds. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-about-officer

In short, the American media serves as a propaganda ministry against the United States.

Today at the gym a person remarked that her fantasy was that the presstitutes are rounded up, forced to dig a trench with their bare hands, and then machine-gunned into the trench. As more and more people feel this way, perhaps it will happen.

Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review

The Ugly American Left is Now Ruling America

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Maxine Waters, a member of Congress, has openly called for violence against dissenters. Not for the first time. To leftists, she is bold, enlightened and progressive. She’s nothing more than an old-fashioned thug. Communism is thuggery. It advocates and practices the use of armed force to achieve all its ends — the redistribution of wealth, the suffocation of dissenting ideas and the disarming of the population. Communists were advocating this in the late 1800s. Today’s elites think they have hit on something new.

Nothing this woman says or does should surprise you. It is 100 percent consistent with the actions of every member of her party (as well as the RINOs) every day of the week. The FBI will not hold her accountable for her open advocacy of violence against unarmed people whose only offense is to disagree with her. The FBI is not on the side of individual rights; our government agencies only wish to protect the guilty, not the innocent. Any anti-Communist who stated or implied one-tenth of what Waters has stated would be under arrest, on the spot. Joe Biden, the nominal head of our federal government, is an open ally of the Chinese Communist Party and a member of a criminal family. Sadly, our government is now on the side of the bad guys — and Maxine Waters is an ugly reminder of this fact.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Shareholder Activism: Woke Capitalism From The Inside

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Conservatives are rightly vexed by “woke capitalism,” exasperated at the ways in which big American corporations are increasingly weighing in on sociopolitical issues—invariably, it seems, in favor of the progressive left. Certainly, many businesses are under pressure to do so.

Sometimes that pressure is open and public. Indeed, it can make national news. But other times it is less so. Many Americans are likely unaware of the coordinated campaigns by shareholder activists—equity owners in a corporation interested in something other than financial gain—to insert their political priorities into those same corporate boardrooms through environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) shareholder proposals.

In his recent and timely bookThe Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business, Stephen R. Soukup calls shareholder proposals “the primary tool of the corporate activist”—and for good reason. Any shareholder, provided they meet certain requirements, may submit proposals to corporate management to be voted on by other shareholders at the company’s annual meeting. These are typically written in the form of a request or recommendation. Large institutional investors (index funds, public pensions, etc.) hold outsized voting power, and many rely on third-party advisory services for recommendations on how they should vote.

Activists, keen on influencing powerful companies to adopt their sociopolitical priorities, buy shares in corporations simply to file proposals that further those priorities. Importantly, the objective isn’t always necessarily to win a majority vote. Proposals that fail, yet still receive substantial or increased support, signal momentum on a particular ESG issue and put pressure on management. Sometimes a company will elect to negotiate on a proposal beforehand to preempt such a vote.

The 2021 Proxy Preview

The 2021 proxy season—the period during which many corporations hold their annual meetings—is in full swing, and nowhere is the extent of ESG shareholder activism more apparent than in the Proxy Preview 2021 report (available from Politicohere). Considered the “Bible for socially progressive foundations, religious groups, pension funds, and tax-exempt organizations,” it details hundreds of ESG proposals filed for this year’s proxy season, with proposal statuses current as of mid-February.

The report also provides a useful overview of the people and organizations most heavily involved in progressive ESG shareholder activism. Dozens of proponents—nonprofits, labor unions, asset managers, and others—submitted proposals, many of which were in turn coordinated or otherwise supported by additional groups. The report singles out the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (a labor union) and four nonprofits—the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Ceres, the Center for Political Accountability, and the Investor Environmental Health Network (a program of Clean Production Action)—for particular acknowledgment.

As You Sow’s 2020 annual report disclosed $11.8 million in revenue, with approximately 96 percent coming from “foundation and sponsorships” sources. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, As You Sow is not required to publicly disclose its donors, but some larger ones in recent years include the Wallace Global Fund, the Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation, the Roddenberry Foundation, the Park Foundation, and the Battery Foundation.

The Proxy Preview report breaks down proposals into each of the three ESG categories, along with numerous subcategories, and these provide a comprehensive elucidation of woke capitalism’s vision for corporate America. Just two of the report’s 92 pages are given over to 23 “conservative” proposals—an illustration of just how ideologically one-sided the world of ESG shareholder activism is. Most conservative proposals came from the National Center for Public Policy Research and its Free Enterprise Project, headed by Justin Danhof, a prominent national expert on the issue.

Although readers are encouraged to browse the report for themselves, a brief sampling of proposals gives a good sense of what America’s public companies have been facing from ESG shareholders this year.

Environmental Proposals

Dozens of proposals were filed on climate change—the dominant environmental issue—and the report notes that the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Ceres “coordinates nearly all these proposals.” At least 18 companies—including CarMax, United Parcel Service (UPS), and Domino’s Pizza—received proposals seeking a report on how each intends to reduce its “contribution to climate change and align its operations” with the Paris Agreement. Major energy producers like Chevron, Phillips 66, and ConocoPhillips were targeted by proposals on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The “biggest new development on climate change,” the report notes, is a campaign called Say on Climate, which is an initiative supported by billionaire British hedge fund manager Chris Hohn’s Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. It campaigns for companies to issue net-zero emissions transition plans and then submit those plans to annual shareholder review. It is an international campaign, and the U.S. effort is being spearheaded by As You Sow, which plans to file hundreds of resolutions with public companies unless they “voluntarily adopt the initiative.”

Social Proposals

Social proposals cover a variety of different issues, but those related to race and diversity are perhaps the clearest theme of 2021. The Proxy Preview notes that the Black Lives Matter movement prompted diversity proposals to double from 2020. Some—like those submitted by New York City’s public pension funds—focus on getting companies to publicly disclose employee diversity data, while others go further and “demand proof of effective diversity and inclusion programs.”

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Change to Win labor federation (of which SEIU is a member) filed proposals at eight large financial institutions seeking a “racial equity audit,” and similar proposals were filed at other companies. NorthStar Asset Management submitted a proposal to PayPal encouraging an assessment of (among other things) whether the company fosters a “cultural hierarchy through perceived pressure to use ‘whitened’ names . . . [or] to adopt ‘white-centric’ physical appearance standards.”

The Nathan Cummings Foundation—a $450 million private foundation—zeroed in on police support. Specifically, it submitted a proposal to Target Corporation arguing that the company’s support for local police could “adversely affect shareholder value.” Indeed, according to the foundation, the mere fact that “Target continues its partnerships with law enforcement,” including “charitable giving to police foundations across the country,” provides “both legitimacy and funding for practices that can exacerbate racial inequity.”

Corporate Governance Proposals

Diversity also plays a role in corporate governance proposals, with approximately 30 resolutions typically asking companies either to adopt a diversity policy for their board of directors or to produce a report detailing how they will increase board diversity. To be sure, a diverse board can be an asset to a corporation, but critically these proposals appear to limit the definition of “diversity” to only gender and racial/ethnic categories. This excludes the myriad other measures of human diversity (age, personal or professional background, life experience, political ideology, etc.) that likely provide more real value to board composition than superficial characteristics like skin color alone.

Finally, and in what is perhaps a glimpse of American capitalism’s ultimate destination as envisioned by ESG activists, a whole class of proposals supported by a nonprofit called the Shareholder Commons seeks to have companies like BlackRock, Caterpillar, Alphabet (Google), and Amazon legally recast themselves as public benefit corporations. Doing so would allow them to prioritize the interests of other “stakeholders” over the interests of their own shareholders, “even when it means surrendering total financial return at an individual company.” This is woke capitalism at its logical terminus: shareholders submitting proposals against those shareholders’ own financial interests.

The Conservative Path Forward

Recent polling by Scott Rasmussen suggests a majority of Americans oppose companies taking positions on political issues. Frustrated that many are nevertheless doing so, however, some conservatives have called for boycotting the offending company’s products or services, or otherwise trying to punish them through disengagement. While the frustration is understandable—and vocally dissatisfied customers can certainly be effective—such actions in isolation may well be counterproductive over the long term.

Instead, as Danhof and others have prominently argued, conservatives should prioritize engaging directly with companies that have drifted inappropriately and unnecessarily into politics. Shareholder votes are one avenue through which this can be done. The lopsided ideological breakdown of the Proxy Preview’s catalog of proposals—where conservative ones amounted to all of 5 percent of the total—suggests that the progressive Left has certainly embraced this approach. If the recent and varied eruptions of woke capitalism are any indication, that strategy is paying off.

Robert Stilson is a research specialist at Capital Research Center.

18 Reasons I Won’t be Getting the COVID Vaccine

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04/15/21

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18 Reasons I Won’t Be Getting a COVID Vaccine

“I’m not here to pick a fight with anyone, just to walk you through some of what I’ve read, my lingering questions and explain why I can’t make sense of these COVID vaccines.”

18 reasons I won't be getting a COVID vaccine.

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A few friends have asked my thoughts on the COVID jab(s) so I thought it was time to write an article on the topic.

Knowing how contentious this issue is, part of me would rather just write about something else. But I believe the discussion/news is so one-sided that I should speak up.

As I always strive to do, I promise to do my best to be level-headed and non-hysterical.

I’m not here to pick a fight with anyone, just to walk you through some of what I’ve read, my lingering questions and explain why I can’t make sense of these COVID vaccines.

Three ground rules for discussion:

If you care to engage on this topic with me, excellent. Here are the rules. I am more than happy to correspond with you if:

  • You are respectful and treat me the way you would want to be treated.
  • You ask genuinely thoughtful questions about what makes sense to you.
  • You make your points using sound logic and don’t hide behind links or the word “science.”

If you do respond, and you break any of those rules, your comments will be ignored/deleted.

With that out of the way, let me say this: I don’t know everything, but so far no one has been able to answer the objections below. So here are the reasons I’m opting out of the COVID vaccine:

1. Vaccine makers are immune from liability

The only industry in the world that bears no liability for injuries or deaths resulting from their products are vaccine makers.

As first established in 1986 with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, and reinforced by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, vaccine makers cannot be sued — even if they are shown to be negligent.

The COVID vaccine makers are allowed to create a one-size-fits-all product, with no testing on sub-populations (i.e. people with specific health conditions), and yet they are unwilling to accept any responsibility for any adverse events or deaths their products cause.

If a company is not willing to stand behind its product as safe, especially one rushed to market, I am not willing to take a chance on that product.

No liability. No trust. Here’s why …

2. The checkered past of vaccine companies

The four major companies who are making COVID vaccines are/have either:

Moderna had been trying to “Modernize our RNA” (thus the company name) for years, but had never successfully brought any product to market. How nice for the company to get a major cash infusion from the government to keep trying.

In fact, all major vaccine makers (save Moderna) have paid out tens of billions of dollars in damages for other products they brought to market when they knew those products would cause injuries and death — see Vioxx, Bextra, Celebrex, Thalidomide and opioids as a few examples.

If drug companies willfully choose to put harmful products in the market — when they can be sued — why would we trust any product where they have no liability?

Three of the four COVID vaccine makers have been sued for products they brought to market even though they knew injuries and deaths would result.

Given the free pass from liability, and the checkered past of these companies, why would we assume that all their vaccines are safe and made completely above board?

Where else in life would we trust someone with that kind of reputation?

To me that makes as much sense as expecting a remorseless, abusive unfaithful lover to become a different person because a judge said deep down they are a good person.

No. I don’t trust them. No liability. No trust. Here’s another reason why I don’t trust them …

Ask Congress to Investigate COVID Origins – Take Action

3. Ugly history of attempts to make coronavirus vaccines

There have been many attempts to make viral vaccines in the past that ended in utter failure — which is why we did not have a coronavirus vaccine in 2020.

In the 1960s, scientists attempted to make an RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine for infants. In that study, they skipped animal trials because the trials weren’t required then.

In the end, the vaccinated infants got much sicker than the unvaccinated infants when exposed to the virus in nature, with 80% of the vaccinated infants requiring hospitalization. Two of them died.

After 2000, scientists made many attempts to create coronavirus vaccines. For the past 20 years, all ended in failure because the animals in the clinical trials got very sick and many died, just like the children in the 1960s.

You can read a summary of this history/science here. Or if you want to read the individual studies you can check out these links:

  • In 2004, attempted vaccine produced hepatitis in ferrets.
  • In 2005, mice and civets became sick and more susceptible to coronaviruses after being vaccinated.
  • In 2012, the ferrets became sick and died. And in this study, mice and ferrets developed lung disease.
  • In 2016, this study also produced lung disease in mice.

The typical pattern in the studies referenced above is that the children and the animals produced beautiful antibody responses after being vaccinated. The manufacturers thought they hit the jackpot.

The problem came when the children and animals were exposed to the wild version of the virus.

When that happened, an unexplained phenomenon called antibody dependent enhancement, also known as vaccine enhanced disease, occurred where the immune system produced a “cytokine storm” (i.e. overwhelmingly attacked the body) and the children/animals died.

Here’s the lingering issue: The vaccine makers have no data to suggest their rushed vaccines have overcome that problem.

In other words, never before has any attempt to make a coronavirus vaccine been successful, nor has the gene-therapy technology in mRNA “vaccines” been safely brought to market.

We might assume that because the companies received billions of dollars in government funding, they must have figured out that problem.

Except they don’t know if they have …

4. The ‘data gaps’ submitted to FDA by vaccine makers

When vaccine makers submitted their papers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the Emergency Use Authorization (which is not the same as a full FDA approval), among the many “data gaps” they reported was that they have nothing in their trials to suggest they overcame that pesky problem of vaccine enhanced disease.

They simply don’t know if the vaccines they’ve made will also produce the same cytokine storm (and deaths) as previous attempts at such products.

As Dr. Joseph Mercola points out …

“Previous attempts to develop an mRNA-based drug using lipid nanoparticles failed and had to be abandoned because when the dose was too low, the drug had no effect, and when dosed too high, the drug became too toxic. An obvious question is: What has changed that now makes this technology safe enough for mass use?”

If that’s not alarming enough, here are other gaps in the data — in other words, there is no data to suggest safety or efficacy regarding:

  • Anyone younger than age 18 or older than age 55.
  • Pregnant or lactating mothers.
  • Autoimmune conditions.
  • Immunocompromised individuals.
  • No data on transmission of COVID.
  • No data on preventing mortality from COVID.
  • No data on duration of protection from COVID.

In case you think I’m making this up, or want to see the actual documents sent to the FDA by Pfizer and Moderna for their Emergency Use Authorization, you can check out this, or this respectively. The data gaps can be found starting with page 46 and 48 respectively.

For now let’s turn our eyes to the raw data the vaccine makers used to submit for emergency use authorization …

5. No access to raw data from trials

Would you like to see the raw data that produced the “90% and 95% effective” claims touted in the news?

Me too. But the companies won’t let us see that data.

As pointed out in the BMJ, something about the Pfizer and Moderna efficacy claims smells really funny. There were “3,410 total cases of suspected, but unconfirmed COVID-19 in the overall study population, 1,594 occurred in the vaccine group vs. 1,816 in the placebo group.”

Wait … what? Did they fail to do science in their scientific study by not verifying a major variable?

Could they not test those “suspected but unconfirmed” cases to find out if they had COVID? Why not test all 3,410 participants for the sake of accuracy?

Can we only guess they didn’t test because it would mess up their “90-95% effective” claims?

Would it not be prudent for the FDA to expect (demand) the vaccine makers test people who have “COVID-like symptoms,” and release their raw data so independent third parties could examine how the manufacturers justified the numbers?

It’s only every citizen of the world we’re trying to get to take these experimental products — why did the FDA not require that? Isn’t that the entire purpose of the FDA anyway?

Good question. Foxes guarding the hen house? No liability. No trust.

6. No long-term safety testing

With products that have been on the market only a few months, we have no long-term safety data.

In other words, we have no idea what this product will do in the body months or years from now — for any population.

Given all the risks above (risks that all pharmaceutical products have), would it not be prudent to wait to see if the worst-case scenarios have indeed been avoided?

Would it not make sense to want to fill those pesky “data gaps” before we try to give this to every man, woman and child on the planet?

That would make sense. But to have that data, they need to test it on people, which leads me to my next point …

7. No informed consent

What most who are taking the vaccine don’t know is that because these products are still in clinical trials, anyone who gets the shot is now part of the clinical trial — part of the experiment.

Those (like me) who do not take it, are part of the control group. Time will tell how this experiment works out.

But, you may be asking, if the vaccines are causing harm, wouldn’t we be seeing that all over the news? Surely the FDA would step in and pause the distribution? (Editor’s note: federal health officials on Tuesday paused the Johnsons & Johnson vaccine over concerns related to blood clots).

If the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) — the government-run system for reporting deaths and injuries after vaccines — worked, maybe things would be different, but …

8. Under-reporting of adverse reactions and deaths

According to a Harvard study (commissioned by our own government), less than 1% of all adverse reactions to vaccines are actually submitted to VAERS.

While the problems with VAERS have not been fixed (as you can read about in this letter to the CDC), at the time of this writing, VAERS reports over 2,200 deaths from the current COVID vaccines, as well as close to 60,000 adverse reactions.

If those numbers represent only 1% of the total adverse reactions (or .8% to 2% of what this study published recently in the JAMA found), you can do the math — but that equates to somewhere around 110,000 to 220,000 deaths from the vaccines to date, and a ridiculous number of adverse reactions.

Bet you didn’t see that on the news.

That death number would currently still be lower than the 424,000 deaths from medical errors that happen every year (which you probably also don’t hear about), but we are not even six months into the rollout of these vaccines yet.

If you want a deeper dive into the problems with the VAERS reporting system, you can check out this or this.

But then there’s my next point, which could be argued makes these COVID vaccines seem pointless …

9. The vaccines don’t stop transmission or infection

Aren’t these vaccines supposed to be what we’ve been waiting for to “go back to normal”? Nope.

Why do you think we’re getting all these conflicting messages about needing to practice social distancing and wear masks after we get a vaccine? The reason is because these vaccines were never designed to stop transmission or infection.

If you don’t believe me, I refer you again to the papers submitted to the FDA I linked to above which show that the primary endpoint (what the vaccines are meant to accomplish) is to lower your symptoms.

Sounds like just about every other drug on the market right? That’s it … lowering your symptoms is the big payoff we’ve been waiting for. Does that seem completely pointless to anyone but me?

  • It can’t stop us from spreading the virus.
  • It can’t stop the virus from infecting us once we have it.
  • To get the vaccine is to accept all the risk of these experimental products and the best it might do is lower symptoms?

There are plenty of other things I can do to lower my symptoms that don’t involve taking what appears to be a really risky product.

Now for the next logical question: If we’re worried about asymptomatic spreaders, would the vaccine not make it more likely that we are creating asymptomatic spread?

If it indeed reduces symptoms, anyone who gets it might not even know they are sick and thus they are more likely to spread the virus, right?

For what it’s worth, I’ve heard many people say the side effects of the vaccine (especially the second dose) are worse than catching COVID.

I can’t make sense of that either.

Take the risk. Get no protection. Suffer through the vaccine side effects. Keep wearing your mask and social distancing … and continue to be able to spread the virus.

It gets worse …

10. People are catching COVID after being fully vaccinated

Talk about a bummer. You get vaccinated and you still catch COVID.

In reality, this phenomenon is probably happening everywhere, but those are the ones making the news now.

Given the reasons above (and what’s below), maybe this doesn’t surprise you, but bummer if you thought the vaccine was a shield to keep you safe.

It’s not. That was never the point.

If 66% of healthcare workers in L.A. are going to delay or skip the vaccine … maybe they aren’t wowed by the rushed science either.

Maybe they are watching the shady way deaths and cases are being reported …

11. Overall death rate from COVID

According to the CDC’s own numbers, COVID has a 99.74% survival rate.

Why would I take a risk on a product, that doesn’t stop infection or transmission, to help me overcome a cold that has a .26% chance of killing me — which actually in my age range is has about a .1% chance of killing me (and .01% chance of killing my kids).

With a bar (death rate) that low, we will be in lockdown every year … i.e., forever.

But wait, what about the 500,000-plus deaths, that’s alarming right? I’m glad you asked …

12. Bloated COVID death numbers

Something smells really funny about this one. Never before in the history of death certificates has our own government changed how deaths are reported.

Why now, are we reporting everyone who dies with COVID in their body, as having died of COVID, rather than the co-morbidities that actually took their life?

Until COVID, all coronaviruses (common colds) were never listed as the primary cause of death when someone died of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, auto-immune conditions or any other major comorbidity.

The disease was listed as the cause of death, and a confounding factor like flu or pneumonia was listed on a separate line.

To bloat the number even more, the World Health Organization and the CDC changed their guidelines such that those who are suspected or probable (but were never confirmed) of having died of COVID, are also included in the death numbers.

If we are going to do that then should we not go back and change the numbers of all past cold and flu seasons so we can compare apples to apples when it comes to death rates?

According to the CDCs own numbers, (scroll down to the section “comorbidities and other conditions”), only 6% of the deaths being attributed to COVID are instances where COVID seems to be the only issue at hand.

In other words, reduce the death numbers you see on the news by 94% and you have what is likely the real numbers of deaths from just COVID.

Even if the former CDC director is correct and COVID-19 was a lab-enhanced virus (see Reason #14 below), a .26% death rate is still in line with the viral death rate that circles the planet every year.

Then there’s this Fauci guy. I’d really love to trust him, but besides the fact that he hasn’t treated one COVID patient, you should probably know …

13. Fauci and others at NIAID own patents on the Moderna vaccine

Thanks to the Bayh-Dole Act, government workers are allowed to file patents on any research they do using taxpayer funding.

Tony Fauci owns more than 1,000 patents (see this video for more details), including patents being used on the Moderna vaccine … for which he approved government funding.

In fact, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — which oversees the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of which Fauci is the director — claims joint ownership of Moderna’s vaccine.

Does anyone else see this as a major conflict of interest, or criminal even?

I say criminal because there’s also this pesky problem that makes me even more distrustful of Fauci, NIAD, and the NIH in general …

14. Fauci is on the hot seat for illegal gain-of-function research

What is “gain-of-function” research? It’s where scientists attempt to make viruses gain functions — i.e. make them more transmissible and deadlier.

Sounds at least a touch unethical, right? How could that possibly be helpful?

Our government agreed, and 2014, banned the practice.

So what did the Fauci-led NIAID do? They pivoted and outsourced the gain-of-function research (in coronaviruses no less) to China — to the tune of a $600K grant.

Mr. Fauci, you have some explaining to do … and I hope the cameras are recording when you have to defend your actions.

For now, let’s turn our attention back to the virus …

15. The virus continues to mutate

Not only does the virus (like all viruses) continue to mutate, but according to world-renowned vaccine developer Geert Vanden Bossche (whom you’ll meet below if you don’t know him) it’s mutating about every 10 hours.

How in the world are we going to keep creating vaccines to keep up with that level of mutation? We’re not.

Might that also explain why fully vaccinated people are continuing to catch COVID?

Why, given that natural immunity has never ultimately failed humanity, do we suddenly not trust it?

Why, if I ask questions like the above, or post links like what you find above, will my thoughts be deleted from all major social media platforms?

That brings me to the next troubling problem I have with these vaccines …

16. Censorship and the complete absence of scientific debate

I can’t help but get snarky here, so humor me.

How did you enjoy all those nationally and globally televised, robust debates put on by public health officials, and broadcast simultaneously on every major news station?

Wasn’t it great hearing from the best minds in medicine, virology, epidemiology, economics and vaccinology, from all over the world. as they vigorously and respectfully debated things like:

  • Lockdowns
  • Mask wearing
  • Social-distancing
  • Vaccine efficacy and safety trials
  • How to screen for susceptibility to vaccine injury
  • Therapeutics, (i.e. non-vaccine treatment options)

Wasn’t it great seeing public health officials (who never treated anyone with COVID) have their “science” questioned?

Wasn’t it great seeing the FDA panel publicly grill the vaccine makers in prime time as they stood in the hot-seat of tough questions about products of which they have no liability?

Oh, wait … you didn’t see those debates? No, you didn’t. Because they never happened.

What happened instead was heavy-handed censorship of all but one narrative.

Mark Zuckerberg can question vaccine safety, but I can’t? When did the First Amendment become a suggestion?

It’s the FIRST Amendment, Mark — the one our founders thought was most important.

With so much at stake, why are we fed only one narrative. Shouldn’t many perspectives be heard and professionally debated?

What has happened to science?

What has happened to the scientific method of always challenging our assumptions?

What happened to lively debate in this country, or at least in Western society?

Why did anyone who disagrees with WHO, or the CDC get censored so heavily?

Is the science of public health a religion now — or is science supposed to be about debate?

If someone says “the science is settled” that’s how I know I’m dealing with someone who is closed minded. By definition science (especially biological science) is never settled.

If it was, it would be dogma, not science.

I want to be a good citizen. I really do.

If lockdowns work, I want to do my part and stay home.

If masks work, I want to wear them.

If social distancing is effective, I want to comply.

But, if there is evidence they don’t (masks for example), I want to hear that evidence, too.

If highly credentialed scientists have different opinions, I want to know what they think. I want a chance to hear their arguments and make up my own mind.

I don’t think I’m the smartest person in the world, but I think I can think. Maybe I’m weird, but if someone is censored, then I really want to hear what they think. Don’t you?

To all my friends who don’t have a problem with censorship, will you have the same opinion when what you think is censored?

Is censorship not the technique of dictators, tyrants and greedy, power-hungry people?

Is it not a sign that those who are doing the censoring know it’s the only way they can win?

What if a man who spent his entire life developing vaccines was willing to put his entire reputation on the line and call on all global leaders to immediately stop the COVID vaccines because of problems with the science?

What if he pleaded for an open-scientific debate on a global stage?

Would you want to hear what he has to say? Would you want to see the debate he’s asking for?

17. World’s leading vaccinologist is sounding the alarm

Here is what may be the biggest reason this COVID vaccine doesn’t make sense to me.

When someone who is very pro-vaccine, who has spent his entire professional career overseeing the development of vaccines, is shouting from the mountaintops that we have a major problem, I think the man should be heard.

In case you missed it, and in case you care to watch it, here is Geert Vanden Bossche, explaining:

  • Why the COVID vaccine may be putting so much pressure on the virus that we are accelerating its ability to mutate and become more deadly.
  • Why the COVID vaccines may be creating vaccine-resistant viruses (similar to antibiotic resistant bacteria).
  • Why, because of previous problems with antibody dependent enhancement, we may be looking at a mass casualty event in the next few months/years.

If you want to see/read about a second, and longer, interview with Vanden Bossche, where he was asked some tough questions, you can check this out.

If half of what he says comes true, these vaccines could be the worst invention of all time.

If you don’t like his science, take it up with him.

I’m just the messenger.

But I can also speak to COVID personally …

18. I already had COVID

I didn’t enjoy it. It was a nasty cold for two days:

  • Unrelenting butt/low-back aches
  • Very low energy
  • Low-grade fever

It was weird not being able to smell anything for a couple days. A week later, coffee still tasted a little “off.”

But I survived.

Now it appears (as it always has) that I have beautiful, natural, life-long immunity — not something likely to wear off in a few months if I get the vaccine. In my body, and my household, COVID is over.

In fact, now that I’ve had it, there is evidence the COVID vaccine might actually be more dangerous for me.

That is not a risk I’m willing to take.

In summary

The above are just my reasons for not wanting the vaccine. Maybe my reasons make sense to you, maybe they don’t.

Whatever does makes sense to you, hopefully we can still be friends.

I for one think there’s a lot more that we have in common than what separates us.

  • We all want to live in a world of freedom.
  • We all want to do our part to help others and to live well.
  • We all want the right to express our opinions without fearing we’ll be censored or viciously attacked.
  • We all deserve to have access to all the facts so we can make informed decisions.

Agree or disagree with me, I’ll treat you no differently.

You’re a human just as worthy of love and respect as anyone else. For that I salute you, and I truly wish you all the best.

I hope you found this helpful. If so, feel free to share.

If not, feel free to (kindly) let me know, in the comments below, what didn’t make sense to you.

Originally published by TRUE Whole Human.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Children’s Health Defense