This week, the Biden administration is arguing its appeal of the masking case. The CDC still insists on its legal right to force you into a mask on buses, trains, or planes – or really anywhere. It’s no longer about the ridiculous claims that masking can stop Covid. Now it is only about power. Power and nothing else.
In a sense, this makes the case more important than ever. Just when it seems like we are winning the argument, a powerful gang of technocrats strikes back with new plans, more dogmas, tighter censorship, more threats.
There are so many elements to this fight, so many fronts and so many issues. We cannot cover them all. Not even close. But we do what we can to make a difference. Thank you as always for your support.
Here is some content from this week:
How to Die of Covid Accidentally, According to the CDC BY JUSTIN HART. The CDC recently confirmed over 800 “accident” Covid-19 deaths in 2021 for people under 60. These are deaths which obviously had little to do with Covid – but they logged them that way anyways. Here are 46 of those deaths from 2021 related just to “falls.”
Technocratic Dystopia Is Impossible BY ROBERT BLUMEN. Grand utopias cannot be realized because, while imagination is unconstrained reality has limits. What is a dystopia other than the role of an NPC in someone else’s utopia? In this case, the utopia is the dream of psychotic elites who imagine that they can have the end products of mass cooperation without the open society that enables it. Much damage can be done in the attempt, but it is only a question of how far it can get before it cancels itself.
Human Sacrifice, Then and Now BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. The peoples of the Mayan and Aztec empires were surrounded by monuments to the greatness of their leaders and their faith, and they celebrated both. We too look back in awe at what they built despite what we know: their social systems were bloody and barbaric in ways we cannot imagine now. And yet when we study their histories in our own times, with the appropriate amount of humility, we face a similar problematic disorientation.
My Role in the Fight Against Mandates and Lockdowns BY LUCIO SAVERIO-EASTMAN. It became very clear that we needed an agile platform that is not mired in bureaucracy or easily intimidated by external forces. Such an organization also needed experienced hands who know about the challenges of public life in a digital age alongside the many considerations that go into surviving as a voice of dissent in times of grave censorship.
What a Local Alternative Is Really Like BY CHRISTINE BLACK. Demand for local processors has swelled in the last three years because shutdowns and lockdowns scared people about food sources being jeopardized and supply chains disrupted, so they sought local alternatives. With economic uncertainties looming, families and friends processing their own, or neighbors’, farm animals may become more common.
A Manhattan Project for the Biomedical Security State: Part 1 BY PAULA JARDINE. On July 11, 2019, a think tank called the Biodefence Commission held a panel discussion entitled A Manhattan Project for Biodefence: Taking Biological Threats off the Table. The objective was to ‘create a national, public-private research and development undertaking to defend the United States against biological threats’.
Everyone Should Shed the Mask BY SERENA JOHNSON. Love, kindness, honesty, respect, creativity and freedom are necessary for human flourishing. Sadly, many still embrace the mask as if it is the only truth that exists. If society is to change, all will need to see and peel away the polish. Then, we will have to work together to replace the emptiness it covers with a society rooted in genuine morality and positive human values.
What to Ask a Covid Task Force Member Under Oath BY DEBBIE LERMAN. We need a hero. Who will break through the wall of secrecy erected by the national security/military/intelligence community around the Covid response and provide the American public with the information that should so obviously be ours for the asking?
BioNTech (Not Pfizer) “Brazenly” Dodged Safety Testing of C19 Vax BY ROBERT KOGON. As the FDA submission discussed by Latypova makes clear, several other categories of preclinical testing were simply omitted altogether. These include so-called safety pharmacology studies, which, per 2005 WHO guidelines, are intended to investigate the effects of a candidate vaccine on “physiological functions (e.g. central nervous system, respiratory, cardiovascular and renal functions) other than those of the immune system.”
Pascal Made Slaves of Us All BY TOBY YOUNG. We need something more than rational scepticism. We need a new ideology – something like a religious movement of our own – one that’s more optimistic about the future of humanity, that places a little more faith in the ability of people to do their own risk assessments and voluntarily adjust their behaviour if necessary.
We Must Have the Truth BY PAT FIDOPIASTIS. Although the CDC acknowledged playing a role in the growing distrust in science, none of their professed forms of atonement, such as promising to share data faster and doing a better job of translating science into policy will restore trust without a process that includes honest debate.
In Defense of Jay Bhattacharya BY DONALD BOUDREAUX.The deceptive description of the policy proposed in the GBD as a “let it rip” strategy was fueled by the purposeful – or perhaps recklessly ignorant – mischaracterization of the GBD by Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci. Prof. Bhattacharya calls not for letting the virus “rip,” but, instead, for Focused Protection. Focusing resources, attention, and care on those persons who are vulnerable while rejecting the utterly unprecedented practice of locking down whole societies is emphatically not a “let it rip” strategy.
How Long Did It Take Them Realize that Human Rights Matter? BY MICHAEL SENGER. We face the question of how to purity test our leaders—both official and unofficial—in light of all the devastation we’ve witnessed during the response to COVID-19. If you believe, as I do, that the importance of this issue presently eclipses that of any other, then every step should be taken to select for leaders who opposed lockdowns as early and as vocally as possible.
How Can We Trust Institutions that Lied? BY ABIR BALLAN. We have a choice: either we continue to passively accept institutional false information or we resist. What are the checks and balances that we must put in place to reduce conflicts of interest in public health and research institutions? How can we decentralise the media and academic journals in order to reduce the influence of pharmaceutical advertising on their editorial policy?
Facebook Is Dead Unless You Post Something that Does Not Matter BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. If some website offered a deal to users – you post pics of lunch, cats, and flowers, and we give you ads – and it worked, fine. That’s normal terms of use. That’s not what is going on. Via explicit and implicit pressure, combined with irresponsible management, Facebook turned over its entire business model to government to deploy on behalf of regime interests. The customers and stockholders were the victims.
Covid Controls Removed in China but Persist in the US BY JOHN TAMNY. Emanuel and the lockdown crowd he caucuses with lament that the return of freedom to the Chinese people “could have been done responsibly.” Too much freedom too fast according to Emanuel et al. He writes that rather than gradually giving it back with experts like him fully in charge, “China ended zero Covid in the most dangerous way possible – precipitously.”
Rumors of the Lab Leak Began with US Intelligence BY WILL JONES. The first known mention of the idea that the coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese lab appeared on January 9th 2020 in a report by Radio Free Asia (RFA). This was just days after the virus had first entered public consciousness, and at the time, no deaths had yet been reported and few people were worrying about the virus – including, it seems, the Chinese, who were claiming it wasn’t even clear whether it was spreading between humans.
Pandemic Potshots and Other Epigrams BY JAMES BOVARD. Outrageous government policies are often shrouded by fogbanks of bureaucratese and political deceit. But a snappy sentence can sometimes puncture the veil and spur the ridicule that policy-makers richly deserve. Following is a round-up of verbal harpoons I flung at Leviathan last year.
The Censorious Scott Gottlieb Was a Major Influence on Lockdowns BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. The person and role of Gottlieb is a paradigmatic case of why and how solving the mysteries of the lockdowns and mandates is such a complicated undertaking. It’s not just about government intervention and it’s not just about private corruption. It’s about a complicated relationship between the two, involving a range of public and private actors in and out of government who seized control of the policy machinery to achieve private ends at enormous public expense.
Ineffective Maltruism BY THOMAS BUCKLEY. The current fad of the financially fabulous is Effective Altruism, which essentially involves promising to give your money while you are still alive to causes and organizations that “do good,” while simultaneously tethering them to your whims through financial dependence. A very specific example of this is the massive money going to barely-surviving but purportedly legit media organizations (or you can just buy the Washington Post.) You get good press when you own it.
The Travel Ban Wrecks Commerce, Constitution, and Civility BY GWENDOLYN KULL. Fiancés and other nonimmigrant family members cannot reunite with their loved ones after years separated. Unfortunately, my family will remain divided, just like countless others, until this Administration decides whether it will defend our Constitution, freedoms, and economy on the world stage or keep doubling down on failed policies until there’s no republic left.
The Boy Who Trapped Death in a Nut BY HALEY KYNEFIN. Life is a messy, risky, and at times lethal adventure, and while it’s perfectly acceptable and in fact compassionate to try to lower this risk to some extent, a complete elimination of all risk would create a dull, lifeless world devoid of conviviality and meaning. The people of Jack’s town are willing to accept some level of pain, sadness and suffering in order to reap the concomitant rewards that come with living life to the fullest.
Jordan Peterson: Enemy of the State BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. No question that this follows Jordan Peterson’s aggressive questioning of the whole of the Covidian agenda, including mass forced vaccination of the population.
Such wonderful articles having absolutely no impact on the political class or mass media. Paula Jardines article struck me as the reason. National defense and security rationale. However, all other articles point to the devious means used to force/coerce uninformed consent to the massive platform experiment research and analysis. All receivers of jabs serve as nudged and mandated lab rats. Sure glad the decision makers are so pragmatic about securing their goals at the expense of basic human rights. Not glad, for those that do not appreciate sarcasm.
My Role in the Fight Against Mandates and Lockdowns
BY Lucio Saverio-Eastman
Thank you. I'm glad you "finally" put the story in writing. I now know that the GBD did not come out of nowhere! I now know how one of my favorite sources (Brownstone Institute) came to be.