Dr. Jay Bhatacharya’s Amazing Story

If you asked me five years ago, I might have struggled to name many people I considered to be heroes. I have many heroes now, many of them people who stood up to censorship. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a highly credentialed doctor, which means that we should have been allowed to hear his opinions during the pandemic. But he was censored, so we did not learn of all of these harms that a lock-down would create:

In the following interview, Dr. Bhattacharya tells his story, including his contributions to the Great Barrington Declaration to his role in the case of Missouri v Biden, which appears destined to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I created the following transcript for those who absorb details better through reading:

The sad fact is that we are living in a time where our once liberal societies are no longer liberal. We live in a deeply illiberal society that punishes people for openly expressing heretical thoughts. And that statement that I just made that we live in, in illiberal society requires some justification. I mean, nominally, we have democracies with constitutions, charters, whatever committed to essential civil liberties necessary for a liberal society.

And I admit, before the pandemic, I took these rights for granted. I took the right to free speech for granted. The right to worship. The right to protest the right to free movement across borders. But during the pandemic, what I learned was that the government could violate each and every one of these rights in the name of infection control. During the pandemic, governments made it nearly impossible for independent scientists to discuss and disseminate ideas contrary to government public health policy. The government censored smeared and defamed dissident scientists who criticized government authorities in the name of science. And I say this from firsthand experience.

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The Backstory to Matt Orfalea’s “Nobody is Safe” Video

Matt Orfalea made this video to show news media hysteria, the over-exaggerations of the dangers of COVID, the unhinged commentators and "experts" claiming that they knew things that they didn't know. Now hosted on X (Twitter), it's an 11-minute demonstration of top-down bullshit driven by lies and power-mongering. This is what our country was subjected to. It's an incredible shameful reaction by a country that has our resources. And all of this propaganda was going in one direction: Get the vaccine! It's important for all of us to see this montage and reflect on how we will perform regarding the next pandemic. I am pessimistic.

Matt's video consists only of already-published video clips of of news commentators and "experts," leading to Youtube's decision (in May) to demonetize it because "it is not suitable for all advertisers." Welcome to America, 2023.

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Conference Panel Discussion on Importance of Biological Sex Cancelled Because of Harm it Would Cause to LBGTQI

From Elizabeth Weiss, Anthropology Professor:

September 25, 2023, my fellow panelists and I received a letter from the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) informing us that our conference panel, “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology”, which had been accepted, is being removed from the program due to the “harm” it will cause the “Trans and LGBTQI community”. We’ve responded to their accusation.

Here is the excuse for the cancellation for the organizers:

Dear panelists, We write to inform you that at the request of numerous members the respective executive boards of AAA and CASCA reviewed the panel submission “Let's Talk about Sex Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology” and reached a decision to remove the session from the AAA/CASCA 2023 conference program(me). This decision was based on extensive consultation and was reached in the spirit of respect for our values, the safety and dignity of our members, and the scientific integrity of the program(me).

The reason the session deserved further scrutiny was that the ideas were advanced in such a way as to cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large. While there were those who disagree with this decision, we would hope they know their voice was heard and was very much a part of the conversation. It is our hope that we continue to work together so that we become stronger and more unified within each of our associations. Going forward, we will undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings and will include our leadership in that discussion

Here is an excerpt from the response from the cancelled panelists.

Your suggestion that our panel would somehow compromise “…the scientific integrity of the programme” seems to us particularly egregious, as the decision to anathematize our panel looks very much like an anti-science response to a politicized lobbying campaign. Had our panel been allowed to go forward, we can assure you that lively contestation would have been welcomed by the panelists and may even have occurred between us, as our own political commitments are diverse. Instead, your letter expresses the alarming hope that the AAA and CASCA will become “more unified within each of our associations” to avoid future debates. Most disturbingly, following other organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology, the AAA and CASCA have promised that “Going forward, we will undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings and will include our leadership in that discussion.” Anthropologists around the world will quite rightly find chilling this declaration of war on dissent and on scholarly controversy. It is a profound betrayal of the AAA’s principle of “advancing human understanding and applying this understanding to the world’s most pressing problems”.

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Matt Taibbi: The “DNC Hack” Appears to be another DNC Hoax.

Matt Taibbi, writing at Racket News:

Open records investigations suggest the same academic researchers responsible for the infamous Alfa Server hoax were likely also the government's initial source that Russia did the "DNC Hack." The same Clinton-campaign-connected researchers who helped generate an infamous fake news story were likely the U.S. government’s source for the initial announcement that Russians hacked the Demcratic National Committee, according to documents produced across years of Open Records requests and congressional letters...

Dismissed, the Alfa fiasco added to a growing pile of elaborate media fakes, one that came to include the Steele dossier, the so-called “Project Birmingham” stunt in which a company called New Knowledge assigned fake Russian Twitter accounts to Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, and the “Hamilton 68” site funded by the German Marshall Fund which used a bogus tracking tool to make figures like Republican congressman Devin Nunes appear tied to “Russian bots.”

Thanks to years of those Freedom of Information filings, it seems clear now the government was relying upon many of the same people associated with these known fake news schemes when it identified Russia as the source of the DNC-DCCC “cyberattacks.”

See also this article at Racket.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi: The “DNC Hack” Appears to be another DNC Hoax.