The Abuse of State Power
The Cycle of Violence Continues
News pertaining to the great upheaval of our time pours in daily and hourly. Whatever the particulars, it’s ultimately about the essential question: who is in charge of our societies and governments, the people or the unelected and unaccountable administrative state?
The balance of power dramatically shifted from March 2020 toward the near-global disenfranchisement of the people and the violent eradication of rights and liberties. The crisis has only intensified in the aftermath, as was inevitable, as was likely intended all along.
Whatever the headlines in the news, this is the backdrop.
Some good news: our new book is out on Kindle: How Covid Enabled the Expansion and Abuse of State Power by Ramesh Thakur. It’s the most credibly documented takedown of lockdown policies yet produced. It will be out in physical form in a few weeks.
There’s not much time remaining to register for Rebuild Freedom, November 4, 2023, Dallas, Texas. It’s an incredible assembly of scholars, researchers, fighters, and supporters, people who refuse to give up on the dream of freedom. We hope to see you there.
Our two working groups on pandemic planning and censorship are now fully operational, thanks to your donations. Look for the results in the coming months and years.
Our supper club welcomes Joshua Stylman on October 25.
Here is some content since our last email:
The Left Needs to Find Itself By David Bell. The new movement of cancellation, vilification, exclusion, and abuse is not a left or right movement. It promotes a form of totalitarianism closer to fascism than anything else, whilst calling others “fascist” for valuing free thought and free association. Fascism is not a synonym for freedom; it has a different and unpleasant meaning.
Covid and the Expansion and Abuse of State Power By Ramesh Thakur. People were told when and where they could shop, the hours during which they could shop, what they could purchase, how close they could get to others, and which direction they could move in by following arrows on the floor. Governments also stepped into nations’ bedrooms to dictate with whom we could and could not be intimate.
The FDA’s Ties to the Gates Foundation By Maryanne Demasi. In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Under the MOU, the two entities agreed to share information to “facilitate the development of innovative products, including medical countermeasures,” such as diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics to combat disease transmission during a pandemic.
The Very Model of a Modern Covid Authoritarian By Brownstone Institute. The struggle underneath many headlines and events in our times – and this is true of the reshuffled alliances with hot war in the Middle East – is the desperate clamor to avoid accountability for those who opened the Pandora’s box of hate, division, state power, propaganda, and violence. That appears to be evolving into a civilization-wrecking dynamic of all against all, even as the instigators cower in the shadows.
The Drumbeat of Trauma-Inducing Events in Our Lives By Thomas Harrington. If left unaddressed, the top-down trauma our “leadership” class seems bent on serially inflicting upon us leads to widespread psychic numbing and a nation of people who learn to comport themselves in the fearful and overly circumspect ways of that “dog that’s been beat too much.”
Internet Censorship, Everywhere All at Once By Debbie Lerman. The conundrum for free and open societies has always been the same: How to protect human rights and democracy from hate speech and disinformation without destroying human rights and democracy in the process. The answer embodied in the recent coordinated enactment of global censorship laws is not encouraging for the future of free and open societies.
If Sweden Won, Why are Swedish Birth Rates Plummeting? By Robert Kogon. Swedish birth rates have been below the prior 10-year trend for no less than 20 months now and the Swedish birth shortfall has gotten progressively worse, reaching a low of -15.5 percent in April of this year and standing at nearly -15 percent according to the latest figures. The Läkaruppropet doctors point out, moreover, that the decline in Swedish birth rates began after Covid-19 vaccinations were rolled out to women of childbearing age.
The Future of Alternative Media Is Unknown, But Critical By Paul Thacker. The possibility of reforming the science writing profession seems very unlikely, as science writers remain locked inside their own community—constrained by partisanship, class, education, and cozy ties to their sources. Any criticism pointing this out is often either ignored or deemed to be proof that the critic is politically conservative, lacks education, or does not have the contacts in science to understand the complexities of research.
The Post-Cold War Origins of the Surveillance State By Andrew Lowenthal. Those who have grounded themselves in politics rather than principles have created a great unmooring that has left us vulnerable to the latest political huckster and led us down a dark, dark, path. Is the speed and force of this shift enough to convince those who had abandoned free speech to renormalise it as a principle? The shoe is now on the other foot.
The Shredded Social Contract By Jeffrey A. Tucker. If we really are looking at something along the lines of 1914, history should absolutely record what immediately preceded these awful days. Governments of the world turned vast resources and attention to the grand project of unprecedented scope: the universal mastery of the microbial kingdom.
Dear American College of Clinical Pharmacy: By Lori Weintz. The role of real leaders is not to “ensure alignment with the expectations and values” of the vocal few, but rather to preserve the ability to approach problems and issues in a manner that allows for consideration of all sides. People cannot make informed, adult decisions if they’re awash in a culture of “safety” where “words are violence,” and differing viewpoints are “harmful.”
The Nays Have It, and That’s Great for Australia By Ramesh Thakur. The $365 million referendum, backed almost unanimously by the governing, educational, financial, media, and sporting institutions and funded generously by them using shareholder and public monies rather than their own, confirmed an alarming gap between the elites and the vast majority. It should but is unlikely to lead to any serious introspection by members of the elite.
What Some Call “Anti-Science” Is Just Anti-authoritarianism By Alex Washburne. It is not “Anti-Science” to question the policies recommended by scientists or to investigate the possibility that scientists cause a pandemic. What Hotez calls “Anti-Science” is the core of science itself: an independence of mind, a diversity of perspectives, and an anti-authoritarian proclivity that conflicts with the interests of authoritarians masquerading as scientists. It is this independence and anti-authoritarianism that inspires confidence in science as well as democratic society, not the toxic ramblings of a scientific authoritarian as he’s unseated from power.
Propaganda and the US Government By Robert Malone. Propaganda is a form of public opinion manipulation involving the creation of a specific narrative that aligns with a political agenda. It uses techniques like nudging, repetition, emotional appeals, selective information, and hypnotic language patterns to influence the subconscious mind, thereby bypassing critical thinking and shaping beliefs and values.
The Complicity of Compliance Robin Koerner. Agents are individuals. Only individuals make moral choices. You are one. Agendas are products of the agency of individuals other than you. For that reason, to choose compliance over conscience is simply to sacrifice your agency for someone else’s – and your morality, too.
Awaken Aletheia! Haley Kynefin. We have access today to more information from more parts of the globe than we have had at any previous point in human history, and we spend hours every day perusing it; but for all that, our ability to meaningfully absorb and verify what we take in seems — if anything — to have diminished. And yet, somehow, it seems the more that we lose contact with our ability to know what’s real, the more intractable we grow in our opinions, and the more we cling to the spurious conviction that we understand the complex world we live in.
The Vaccine War: A Technical Review Bhaskaran Raman. There are several crowning achievements of Indian scientists over the ages, which Indians can be rightfully proud of: ranging from zero (literally) to Ramanujam’s breathtaking mathematical genius to the recent strides in rocket science (also literal). Covid-19 vaccine development and rollout is most emphatically not among them.