Our government working hard to prove that they don't give a shit about us. Revelations by Rand Paul. Corporate media, fascinated by the COVID pandemic, avoids this this story like the plague.
I had been reading RFK, Jr's long book, The Real Anthony Fauci, when I noticed that a three-hour documentary has been released based on this same book. The documentary is both riveting and demoralizing, filling in dozens of holes avoided by corporate media. They want to keep you ignorant.
I highly recommend watching this so that you can knock the scales from your eyes. It's not merely about Anthony Fauci. It's about our out-of-control corrupt medical system. Rather than getting frustrated by the system, this documentary names names and offers specifics about the cash-infused misguided ideology that now substitutes for what should be free-ranging endlessly-curious and self-critical science. You will learn why your doctors' hands are often tied.
You will learn many reasons for why the existence of the COVID vax is massive scandal and that there were many better alternatives. What makes me sad is that the people who need to watch this the most will refuse to watch it because they insist that Fauci should forever remain on a pedestal no matter how many people he has killed over the decades (including the AIDS scandal) through his corruption and ignorance.
Michael Shellenberger discusses the mind of the censor with Glenn Loury:
I have come to the conclusion that not only is there something wrong legally and morally with people who want to censor their fellow citizens, there's also something wrong psychologically. Where the desire to discuss and debate is healthy, the desire to censor and silence betrays a kind of mental or even spiritual sickness.
I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the moment requires it: if you want to censor people you hate, there's something wrong with you. You are suffering from a toxic mixture of entitlement, arrogance, and insecurity. Go on a long walk. Talk to an elder. Seek help.
We live in a free society. Get used to it. Talk back to the voice in your head telling you that you have the right to shut people up. If you're too insecure to engage in free and open debate, then you have no right to demand censorship.
Consider also these excerpts from Robert Corn-Revere's book: The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder.
At City Journal, Ilya Shapiro offers this toolkit in case you are cancelled:
As the writer Jonathan Rauch has observed, criticism, or “expressing an argument or opinion with the idea of rationally influencing public opinion through public persuasion,” can be distinguished from canceling, which is “organizing or manipulating a social environment or a media environment with a goal or predictable effect of isolating, deplatforming, or intimidating an ideological opponent.” . . . What follows is a guide for what to do if it happens to you.
The most important task when facing a cancellation campaign is to define your goals. Obviously, you want the mobbing to stop and for things to return to “normal.” But ask yourself what, specifically, that means. Do you want to keep your job? Get the position on the law review that you deserve? Become famous? Deter further publicity? Make money off an unexpected opportunity? Retain your reputation for integrity, intelligence, and friendliness? Your strategy will follow from your ultimate aim.
Locking down your message means articulating a cohesive and consistent response to the charges against you and providing the context that the mob maliciously ignores. Once you know your goals, you can form a plan for achieving them and think through contingencies based on different ways in which the cancellation attempt unfolds. Those aims will also determine the answer to such key questions as, “Should I apologize?” Any strategy needs to adapt as events develop, but an anti-cancellation plan should always maintain a focus on your goals.
Full article at City Journal.
Matt Taibbi is flummoxed. So am I. Any curious person would be. Matt tries to explain what happened in he recent article: "A Saturday Massacre in CongressOn a Saturday to mark and remember, congress funds two wars and hands the intelligence agencies sweeping new surveillance power, getting nothing in return."
Please. Someone tell me who is moving the levers of power in DC and how? Matt Taibbi offers this:
Mike Johnson is now Winston Churchill. All he had to do was give the NSA unlimited spying power, overrule constituents about funding two wars, and support allowing government to block a platform used by 60 million Americans.
In return he got: nothing. No immigration reform, no articulation of benchmarks or a plan for success in Ukraine, no accounting for past spending, no insistence on warrants to spy on Americans, no concession that FISA can only be reauthorized by Congress, no claw-back of a major new “Everybody is a Spy” surveillance ask. Johnson traded his starting lineup for the proverbial bag of balls.
History will look back at a moment below from April 12th, just before the House passed FISA, and wonder about a last comment from Johnson. The Speaker talks about being originally horrified by the “terrible abuses, hundreds of thousands of abuses” of FISA by the FBI.
But “then when I became Speaker, I went to the [secure briefing room] and got a confidential briefing” from intelligence officials, and heard “sort of the other perspective on that.” It “gave him a different perspective.”
Regarding FISA, Reason explains what was at stake in an article titled "Revised Section 702 Surveillance Authority Poses More Danger Than EverNew language could make almost anybody with access to a WiFi router help the government snoop."If this became law, millions of American small business owners would have a legal obligation to hand over data that runs through their equipment," caution former Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R–Va.) and former Sen. Mark Udall (D–Colo.), both now with the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability. "And when they're done with doing their part in mass surveillance, these small businesses would then be placed under a gag order to hide their activities from their customers."
It seems like Glenn Greenwald is thinking more bad things are happening than he is willing to articulate at this time. Consider this part of Glenn's monologue: [More . . . ]