YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki proudly admits to censoring information on COVID and demonetizing creators that challenge the mainstream climate change narrative. pic.twitter.com/kKVIanjpGd

— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) June 1, 2022

Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s brand-new VP pick, is a fanatical far-left lunatic wearing the friendly armor of hapless, bloated oaf from the sticks.

He’s America’s Dad. A patriotic National Guardsman. The hokey, folksy, small town hick made good. He’s not weird—he’s totally normal. He’s the inspiring Friday Night Lights football coach to a ragtag gang of kids. The beloved longtime social studies teacher. Just a regular guy. Why, shucks—Tim Walz is just plain as American as apple pie!

Only…is he?

Sure, Coach Tim enjoyed spending an exorbitant amount of time lurking around young boys in their football locker room.

Sure, he legalized pedophilia in his state, reclassifying child sexual abuse by adults as just another “sexual orientation.” Tim thinks love is love!

Sure, his closest friend in the state house is Leigh Finke, a freakish man who dresses up as a woman and speaks in a terrifying baritone voice. USA Today named him Minnesota’s Woman of the Year.

Finke is the one who asked Tim to legalize pedophilia, and Tim was happy to submit to the powerful, strapping Finke.

Sure, he volunteered to run the unsanctioned, unofficial Gay-Straight alliance club at his high school. In fact, he was the first teacher who raised his hand! He’s such a good guy that he was pleased as punch to spend time alone with confused kids behind closed doors without their parents, talking to them about their deepest sexual desires and their private parts.

Sure, he let BLM burn his city to the ground. He didn’t call in his buddies at the National Guard for four days.

But hey, it’s not his fault—he lost the number to his old unit! Or maybe they blocked his number after he ducked out on their deployment just weeks before the men he commanded left. Some of the men he commanded and abandoned were killed in battle, while caring old Coach Walz was busy scooping up donor bucks in Saint Paul to run for a lucrative spot in Congress.

And yes, he let everyone think he fought in Afghanistan. He even nodded along with the C-Span host when he commended him for his combat role in Afghanistan. He never bothered to correct any of his official bios, or glowing newspaper articles.

So, old Tim has a few questionable things in the bio.

But—it gets worse. Much worse!

Mao Ze Tim’s China Connection

None of the above red flags are as startling, as disqualifying, as weird as his mysterious multi-decade partnership with a shadowy Chinese travel agency.

Comrade Walz “became fascinated with China during his youth. As a newly elected congressman, he told The Hill that "China was coming, and that's the reason that I went.”

He studied East Asian Studies at the University of Houston in the mid-1980s—at the height of the Cold War!

He first went to China to spend a year teaching English. “Walz was among the first government-sanctioned groups of American educators to teach in China.” But really, he never left.

In 1994, the Walzes founded a travel company called Educational Travel Adventures, taking groups of American high schoolers on trips to China. Tim Walz personally led tour groups of kids in Communist China every year for years. Their last trip with kids to China was in 2003.

1994 was the same year he married his wife, Gwen—on the fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. Why that date? “He wanted to have a date he'll always remember," [Gwen Walz] told the Star-Herald.

Tim then immediately returned to China for his honeymoon.

“Walz and his wife, Gwen, who is also a teacher, spent their honeymoon in China. The pair spent their trip leading two high school tour groups, according to the Journal Star.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m sure every normal, down-to-Earth, all-American patriotic American man would be happy to take groups of minor children with them on their honeymoon—in China. Right? How romantic! Do you think Tim and Gwen let the kids sleep in their honeymoon suite? Might have gotten a little crowded!

I don’t know why Tim Walz was obsessed with this Communist dictatorship. I don’t know why he seemed fanatically obsessed with taking young, impressionable minors with him to China every year for many years. I don’t know what he taught those kids. I don’t know exactly why Tim Walz preferred to spend time with his wife on trips only in the presence of minors.

But I think it is safe to say that for a humble, social studies teacher from the sticks, a guy with not a single 401k, stock, or investment of any kind, it is strange to think that he would have the resources and the clout to arrange all of these trips, and get the appropriate government permissions, and cut through all the significant red tape, without extensive involvement and partnership with members of the CCP.

Who were they? Who were his contacts? What help or resources did they provide to the Walzes to make this rather exotic travel company viable?

And why isn’t there a single photo on the internet of Tim Walz in China? No photos of him posing at the Great Wall? Where’d they go? You’d think there’s be a ton of these. Zero, as far as I can tell.

As far as I can tell, touring a communist country every year with children is highly unusual behavior for a patriotic member of the American National Guard.

How did this otherwise undistinguished, bloated, slightly ridiculous misfit with no discernible skills or talents start Educational Travel Adventures, anyway? I googled the name and found the website. It is unclear if this is the same company, but if it is, it has now expanded its reach into many other countries. Curiously, China is no longer one of the countries they go to. Strange!

Let’s Recap:

30 trips to China on a school teacher salary.

Obsession with two things: China and gay minors.

Organized his life to spend as much time as possible with minors without their parents.

Lied about his football coaching career: he was the part-time defensive coordinator, not the head coach.

Devoted his life to taking American minors to China to learn about Communism.

Took minors with him on his honeymoon in China.

Zero investments in any American stocks or bonds.

Had the connections to found a Chinese-focused travel agency in 1994.

Legalized pedophilia in his state.

Lied that he fought in a combat zone (he never set foot in a combat zone).

Abandoned his unit right before deployment.

Don’t you dare conclude that he was obviously gathering intel for the CIA going undercover as a teacher, or that he was somehow working for the Chinese to spread their propaganda among young American students. Don’t you dare conclude he is a communist, either. Or a minor attracted person. He’s just a normal American!

One more thing: I have it on very solid authority that more information is coming out about Beijing Tim. One trustworthy reporter I know described it as “Disqualifying. Wow.” Stay tuned!

Bottom line: Will any of this matter to the election? Will any of Kamala’s crowds of Krazy Karens care? Unlikely. The lesbians and librarians and unmarried girlbosses of American are all-in for the Dems.

But it may convince some fence-sitters that this ticket is just a little too creepy and way too Communist for comfort. (read more)

Hey guys, I had a piece last week in UnHerd discussing hundreds of emails I had gone through that found social media influencer Zeynep Tufekci pressured the prestigious medical nonprofit Cochrane to put out a statement attacking their own review that found there is little evidence that masks stop respiratory viruses. One of the people Tufekci interviewed for the piece also told me that she twisted his words, which is obvious from the emails.

I want to walk you through some of those emails, but if you’d like to read the piece in UnHerd, it’s here: How the NYT undermined mask evidence: Leaked emails reveal how scientists were smeared.

The emails were sent to me after someone had filed Freedom of Information requests at different universities, and I got others from a person at Cochrane who is upset at what is happening inside the organization. Let’s first set the stage for what happened.

Mask activist on the attack

In March 2023, New York Times columnist Zeynep Tüfekçi wrote an essay arguing that “masks work” while attacking a review on masks by Cochrane, which publishes the gold standard of evidence for medical interventions. When Tufekci’s piece first appeared, I knew it smelled fishy.

Just a month prior, I had published a long Q&A with Tom Jefferson, the lead author of the Cochrane 2023 mask review. Jefferson loves going into all kinds of details about the hierarchy of evidence, how reviews are done, the contrasts between different types of reviews, and other tiny bits of medical information that only interest people with decades of expertise in clinical trials and medical research.

In short, very hard to follow.

My interest in masks was to help readers cut through all the controversy, to understand whether they really help with COVID and if mask mandates make sense in their schools and local community. I had noticed videos and news stories circulating on social media pointing out that several public health officials had done a 180 from the early months of the pandemic, first stating that masks don’t work, before pivoting to advocate for masks.

I called this the “great mask-science flip flop of 2020” and participants included Canada’s chief health officer, Theresa Tam, as well as the leading public health official in England, Jenny Harries.

Even Tony Fauci performed a mask-science flip flop, first arguing that masks didn’t work, before pivoting into full-on mask activist.

As Jefferson kept rambling on with tiny details about how to perform medical reviews that nobody but an expert in medical reviews could really follow, I stopped him.

“Wait, did you just say that Cochrane has done this mask review several times?” I asked. “This isn’t the first one?”

“Yes,” he replied.

So we went down the list. The Cochrane mask review published in February 2023 wasn’t the first time Cochrane scientists had examined the scientific literature to see if there was any evidence masks worked to stop viruses. They had published prior updates finding the same thing in 2020, 2011 2010, 2009, and 2007.

So the whole thing started 17 years ago.

Every time Cochrane has put out a review that looked at masks, nobody said anything, because masking wasn’t controversial. Everyone agreed that masks didn’t seem to stop viruses. Physicians had first started using masks over a hundred years ago but that was to stop spreading bacteria during surgery. And bacteria are hundreds of times larger than viruses.

I then started digging around and found several scientific studies concluding masks don’t do much to stop respiratory viruses, as well as several examples of international medical bodies drawing similar conclusions. For example, the World Health Organizations stated in their 2019 pandemic preparedness plan, “There have been a number of high-quality randomised controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrating that personal protective measures such as hand hygiene and face masks have, at best, a small effect on influenza transmission.”

 So why was I reading a “masks work” essay in the New York Times?

The only explanation is Zeynep Tüfekçi. I didn’t really know Tüfekçi until I read her “masks work” essay last year, and when I looked into her background I found that she was mostly unknown in the scientific world until COVID. Once the pandemic started she made a name for herself writing essays in places like Wired and Scientific American. Intrigued, I looked into her academic publishing record and found that her academic CV was a tad barren, with few peer-reviewed studies but a slew of opinion articles.

Plus, Tüfekçi has no training in medicine or public health.

I then discovered that her profile had exploded in March 2020 when a New York Times media reporter praised Tüfekçi for a March 1 tweetstorm and March 17 essay in The New York Times that swayed the CDC to alter federal guidance and begin advising people to mask.

As I read the article praising Tüfekçi, I started laughing at how crazy it was that national policy could be set by tweets and an essay, not anything published by scientists. It was just so bizarre.

Tüfekçi has bounced around to different universities in the past four years, but at the beginning of the pandemic, she was a professor at the University of North Carolina. North Carolina’s big paper is the Raleigh News & Observer, and I found that they profiled Tüfekçi in 2021, anointing her a COVID hero who had challenged top health officials and got the facts right — but with essays, not science.

Instead of conducting lab experiments related to Covid-19, she used her platform on Twitter and in the opinion sections of Scientific American, The Atlantic and The New York Times to inform the public with practical advice about what to do and why.

I read that newspaper article thinking, “Thank God Tüfekçi didn’t use her platform on Twitter to challenge airline pilots at Raleigh-Durham International that she could fly a 747 to London’s Heathrow.”

And then I got the emails.

Opinions mean nothing, emails and documents everything

One of the first things I noticed was that Tüfekçi had emailed Michael Brown, a physician at Michigan State University, on February 24, 2023. According to other emails, I learned that Michael Brown had been the sign off editor for the mask review.

Why, I wondered, had Tüfekçi contacted Brown at this time?

Searching the news, I realized that Tüfekçi’s New York Times colleague, Bret Stephens, had published an essay three days prior, ribbing mask advocates like Tüfekçi because of Cochrane’s mask review: “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?”

Tüfekçi’s rise in prominence is based mostly on her mask advocacy, and the thrust of Stephens’ piece in the New York Times must have cut her open like a surgeon’s scalpel:

[W]hen it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. 

Without much of a scientific publishing record and so much of her credibility tied to her mask advocacy, Stephens’ essay must have felt threatening.

But when she contacted Brown, Tüfekçi laid it on thick that she was an academic researcher, claiming expertise in statistics and causal inference, as well as scientific reviews.

“I use and participate in reviews myself (I’m writing one in my own field soon) and thus am familiar with many of the challenges and issues.”

You don’t need to have attended university to know that Tüfekçi is fibbing here. I glanced through Google Scholar to see what Tüfekçi has published in the academic literature and didn’t find much except opinion pieces. In all of 2024, Tüfekçi has not published a single article in the scientific literature, and in 2023, she published one piece: an opinion essay.

As for the review Tüfekçi told Brown in March 2023 that she was writing “in my own field soon”? It has never appeared.

When I contacted Brown about Tüfekçi, he told me that he had been a bit naive perhaps in dealing with her, as he hadn’t looked into her background, and didn’t realize that she was a mask activist. But what Tüfekçi did with the quotes she took from Brown is quite disturbing.

In her article, Tüfekçi quoted Brown and followed up in the next paragraph implying that he supported the idea that “the evidence is really straightforward” that masks provide protection from COVID. But Brown told me that’s not what the science concludes.

Here’s the section of Tüfekçi’s essay:

Brown, who led the Cochrane review’s approval process, told me that mask mandates may not be tenable now, but he has a starkly different feeling about their effects in the first year of a pandemic.

“Mask mandates, social distancing, the other shutdowns we had in terms of even restaurants and things like that — if places like New York City didn’t do that, the number of deaths would have been much higher,” he told me. “I’m very confident of that statement.”

So the evidence is relatively straightforward: Consistently wearing a mask, preferably a high-quality, well-fitting one, provides protection against the coronavirus.

This is just sleazy.

When I contacted Brown, he said that Tüfekçi spun his words, because the evidence is clear that masks don’t seem to do much. Brown actually stated as much some months after Tüfekçi interviewed him. Emailing the organizer of a talk he was giving, Brown wrote that masks “likely” provide “some” protection but “do not make a major impact at the community level when promoted as a public health intervention.”

This is basically the opposite of how Tüfekçi framed Brown’s quote in her essay.

Brown also told me that he had told Tüfekçi to contact the scientists who wrote the Cochrane review, because they are the real experts. Duh! While he was the editor of the review, he hadn’t read each and every published study like the review authors.

But Tüfekçi ignored Brown. Instead, Tüfekçi contacted Karla Soares-Weiser, the woman running Cochrane. Apparently, Tüfekçi sent a slew of questions, because Soares-Weiser then emailed Lisa Bero, a professor medicine at the University of Colorado who serves as Cochrane ethics advisor.

“Lisa, I have been back and forth with NYT about the mask review. CAN I GET YOUR VIEWS ON THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS?” emailed Soares-Weiser. She then sent questions to Bero that she had gotten from Tüfekçi.

What makes this all comical is that Tüfekçi obviously knows nothing about reviews, yet Soares-Weiser freaked out because Tüfekçi writes a column at the New York Times.

It’s science by essay writer.

After Bero answered the questions, Soares-Weiser thanked her. “Thank you, Lisa. I'm navigating a difficult situation and of course need to take these points into account. Help appreciated.”  

For anyone with a passing familiarity with scientific research, one thought should come immediately to mind: why didn’t Soares-Weiser tell Tüfekçi to send those questions to scientists who had written the review? That’s what Michael Brown did.

That will become clear in a bit.

I got a copy of the email Tüfekçi sent Jefferson for questions and it’s dated March 9, the day before she published her 2000+ word essay. I’ve written for the New York Times. It’s a rather laborious process dealing with editors and fact checkers. It would impossible for Tüfekçi to contact Jefferson for comment and then slam out a 2000+ word essay, get that essay edited, deal with those edits, and then get it fact checked.

What those dates tell you is that Tüfekçi had the essay ready to publish before she contacted Jefferson for comment, suggesting she didn’t even care what he had to say. Jefferson has been publishing scientific research on respiratory virus for several decades, but Tüfekçi wasn’t interested in what he had to say because she already considered herself the expert.

The day Tüfekçi published her essay, Soares-Weiser then rushed out a statement claiming she was working to fix problems in the Cochrane mask review. But Soares-Weiser did this without consulting the scientists who had done the work. This would be like the editor-in-chief of the New York Times publishing an essay complaining about a New York Times investigative series without bothering to consult any of the reporters or editors who had done the work.

“I will not speak for the others but am deeply distressed by this course of events which have occurred without our knowledge,” replied Jon Conly, a professor and former head of the department of medicine at the University of Calgary.

Michael Brown responded that he had spoken to Tüfekçi and told her that “I stood by the conclusions of the review but asked that she reach out to you, the authors, to answer some of her questions directly. She assured me that she would do so.”

Of course, Tüfekçi did NOT reach out to the scientific authors, because she wasn’t interested in what they had to say.

Brown then sent an email to Soares-Weiser and several of the Cochrane editors reminding them that changes were being considered to the mask review language, even though it was the same wording as had been used in the 2020 update.

Why were changes being considered then? As Brown explained, it had nothing to do with science. “[I]t was only under intense media coverage and criticism that these revisions were suggested.”

Emails find that Soares-Weiser appeared to be in a bit of panic, monitoring negative commentary about her decision to publish a statement without bothering to consult the scientists. “I had a challenging meeting with the [governing board] yesterday. I am holding on, stressed, but OK,” she emailed Lisa Bero.

Bero then suggested to Soares-Weiser that Cochrane publish negative comments being submitted by outsiders criticizing the mask review. “That should be published as soon as possible (following screening for libel or profanity),” Bero emailed. “It is important for readers to know that criticism has not just come through the media, but through the formal channels that we have.”

Shortly after bullying Cochrane’s Soares-Weiser to put out a statement claiming she would make changes to the mask review, Tüfekçi began tweeting that she had gotten the review “corrected.”

However, this isn’t true.

A month back, Soares-Weiser put out a correction to her prior statement, and now says that Cochrane will not make any changes to the mask review.

The entire saga calls into question Zeynep Tüfekçi’s ethics and whether Soares-Weiser is still fit to lead Cochrane. (read more)

You might well wonder: how does the Democratic Party rank and file sustain such fervor for the wrecking crew of Harris & Walz conjured up with zero input from the Party’s demos? Just plopped onstage as by the old MGM studio heads casting a pair of iffy contract players in a “B” movie musical called Our Pronouns Are Cash and Carry.

So far, Harris and Walz levitate in fake polls on gusts of idiot wind from the Party’s unofficial public relations team of the The New York Times / MSNBC / CNN / NPR media matrix. But it’s already obvious that Veep Kamala Harris’ brain is just a laugh generator triggered by anything that sounds like an idea from the material world: the economy? Hee-haw. . . Ukraine? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha. . . The border? Tee-hee. . . Transitioning minor children?  Yuk-yuk-yukity-yuk. . . The Middle East? Cackle cackle. . . .

You are well aware, I’m sure, that the veep has yet to be exposed to a single unscripted interchange with anyone outside her promotional circle. It’s been kind of a neat trick to behold, like watching a barking terrier walk around the stage on its hind legs — but after a while the audience might be thinking, What else can you show me?

You must not suppose this liminal moment in history between the defenestration of “Joe Biden” and the apparent selection of Harris &  Walz is anything but a transient psychotic episode in American politics. The tell is that nobody in the Dem fold is inquiring as to how it happened, and especially who is behind it. Has the Dem Party become just Speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi’s personal mafia? It appears that she was the one who delivered the black spot to “JB.” Do Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries even matter in that supposed hierarchy, or is Mrs. Pelosi sole proprietor of the org now?

There must be a few unfettered souls among the Dem delegates who detect that, without the smoke and mirrors of the media matrix, Harris & Walz can’t possibly make the case for getting elected honestly. And the odds of successfully rigging another national election seem to be on-the-fade, too, with such obvious pranks as registering 371 illegal aliens (non-citizens) to vote using an address that turns out to be a Walmart parking lot. Yesterday, Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia signed an excutive order requiring paper ballots and voter ID along with other new regs. Is a trend underway among the states to clean up their acts?

The so far railroaded national Dem delegates have ten more days to watch the Harris / Walz tag-team get vivisected on “X”, which, like it or not, has become the sole open conduit for news and commentary in a nation ruled by a psychopathocracy. You can say that because the policies they promote are obviously inimical to our country’s well being — open borders, harassment, arrest and censorship of political opponents, the pointless Ukraine war, sexual mutilation of children, mass digital surveillance, medical quackery, and a policy of lying about absolutely all of it. Many still recognize insanity when they see it in action. These matters are not defensible and, deep down, they must know it, and maybe enough of the delegates will decide to do something about it — like revolt against the candidates foisted on them.

One possible result, of course, is that such a revolt will rip the party to shreds. You can easily imagine chaos in the streets of Chicago among the disaffected delegates and the Antifa shock troops called forth to punish them. Chaos for its own sake is highly valued by so-called “progressives” looking to progressively destroy the entire armature of civilized life in order to create out of the ashes a nirvana of sadomasochistic persecution and punishment — their Hieronymus Bosch Wokester utopia.

I’m guessing that there will be untoward discoveries about, and mortifying blunders galore by, Harris & Walz these ten days ahead, and they will go into the Chicago convention like two pitiful creatures marked for sacrifice. Gawd knows what will emerge from the turbulence that ensues — but I’m still dogged by the feeling that the only plausible outcome is a giant flying reptile with a face like Hillary’s swooping into the arena on her great, flapping, leathery wings crying, Caw caw caw, I own you all now, you miserable cat ladies, incels, nose-rings, and sundry victims of hateful offense! Follow me once more into the glorious rapture of defeat! And it shall be done! (read more)

We suspected they would go too far, because that’s what the left always does.  Once their pop-narrative enters the entire tribe of progressives, the various factions within it always try to one-up each other and highlight their support.  It’s like watching a branding effort for 7-minute-abs, 6-minute-abs, no… hold on, wait…  Yes, 5-minute-abs!

According to Marquette University Kamala “Brat” Harris is now solidly ahead of the orange man by something like four-hundred-eleventy-five points and 3 billion ballots.

MEDIA – Kamala Harris has opened up an eight-point lead over Donald Trump, according to a stunning new poll. Among likely voters, Harris is on 50 percent and Trump 42 percent, the Marquette Law School Poll published on Wednesday found. (LINK)

.Trump just put out this compilation of Kamala Harris *attempting* to speak off script

And holy crap it’s brutal pic.twitter.com/hOk0n7O72a

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) August 9, 2024

KAMALA — UNSCRIPTED FOR THE FIRST TIME:

“This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy.”

WHAT? pic.twitter.com/lxlhhG1xhT

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 2, 2024

Seriously, just laugh at it.  There’s absolutely nothing there.  Ridicule is the best weapon against this silly propaganda. (read more)

Map Shows Cities With Highest Rates Of Robbery

As of mid-2024, robbery rates in the U.S. have varied widely across cities, with some urban areas experiencing particularly high levels of this crime.

Robbery, defined in a recent Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) report as "theft or attempted theft involving force or the threat of force," appears to remain a concern in these cities, despite a general downward trend in several types of crimes nationally.

According to the CCJ's mid-year 2024 update, while robbery rates have decreased by six percent on average across a sample 34 U.S. cities from 2023 to 2024, certain urban areas continue to face high robbery rates.

[...]
 
The 10 cities from the sample with the highest rates of robbery in June were: Baltimore, Minneapolis, Chicago, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Seattle, Denver, and Little Rock, Arkansas.

Baltimore leads the list with a comparatively high robbery rate of 67.05 per 100,000 residents. The data showed that rates in the Maryland city had been persistently high.

Similarly, Chicago and Philadelphia have seen significant robbery challenges, according to the study. Chicago had a rate of 30.96, whilst Philadelphia's rate was 21.80.

St. Louis and Little Rock were also notable for their elevated robbery rates despite their smaller size.

The cities of Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. also ranked highly, with D.C.'s proximity to federal institutions seemingly not deterring the occurrence of such crimes.

San Francisco had a rate of 26.58, and Seattle had a rate of 18.41.

Finally, Denver rounds out the list, with the city witnessing robbery rates of 17.3 per 100,000 residents. (read more)

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Bach just said we have zero scientific ways to identify a woman pic.twitter.com/LUqsrNXLr3

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 9, 2024

Dear Prime Minister,

Your condemnation of everyone as Far Right suggests a misunderstanding of the phrase.

Left wing means Big Government or Constructive Rationalism, i.e. a constructed or made-up world.

Right Wing is Small Government or Critical Rationalism, i.e. a society and economy that adjusts to reality rather than other way around.

Left Wing is control by government, living your life for you, and right wing is freedom.

Left wing is effectively a denial of reality - a lie if you will - whereas right wing is the truth.

This is why the left cannot tell the truth to the public because to do so would undermine its whole belief system. It is only through the truth that problems can be solved, and the economy and society improve, clearing to that truth in a path of prosperity. By contrast, by clearing of truth, left wing government follows a road to serfdom.

As a lawyer, you will know the difference between The Rule of Law and legislation. The Rule of Law is that derived of common consent, which is very different from legislation, which is imposed, and therefore a corruption of the system. The Rule of Law is the optimum place for the economy and society to be because it is where the system is effectively in equilibrium with reality. Any government beyond that, or less than that, is always sub optimal, at the expense of society.

There is a real cost to everything, and therefore anything that doesn’t create the utility to pay for itself is at the expense of capital. This means there is a real price for everything, although that price is dynamic and will depend on all other prices.

All government does, at least beyond implementing The Rule of Law, is “impose prices”, whether that is through fiscal, monetary, or regulatory policy. Any government beyond the Rule of Law is nothing but an imposed price rather than a taken one, and therefore a corruption of the system, which, given how large government has become, is being done on an industrial scale. Given just how big government has now become, not just through fiscal policy but regulatory policy as well, far from the idea of helping people, you have impoverished society and effectively stolen people’s lives from them, making them dependents of you. Why? I can only hope it’s because of a lack of understanding on your behalf rather than malice. 

The Rule of Law, that comes by common consent, is effectively a taken price – the system optimising law to the most productive economy and society etc, which is why it defines the optimum level of government. Legislation, on the other hand, is imposed prices, and therefore a corruption of reality and a suboptimal economy and society.

By imposing prices, the government is discriminating, saying this is where it values something rather than where reality values it. Left wing is, by definition, discriminatory, and as applied to race, is racist. A free market, on the other hand, is colour blind. It is only interested in the true value of things, and indeed the truth. Right wing clears to the truth and wealth creation whereas left wing clears of the truth and wealth to its constructed reality. 

Fascism is a term coined by Mussolini to mean “everything in the state, nothing outside the state”. It is clearly left wing as was always understood at the time. National Socialism was competing with Communism for the extreme left-wing vote. Yes, people were allowed to own capital, but as the government directed how that capital was to be used, it was left wing. It was only Stalin trying to separate the two ideologies that called it right wing, a tactic that has grown ever since as left-wing parties try to distance themselves from their own failures. The main difference between the two parties was Communism was global whereas Nazis was a national form of socialism, hence Stalin’s labelling of it as right wing associated that national aspect to also relate to right wing. You cannot have right wing dictatorships as it is a contradiction in terms.

Because constructivism is about imposing prices rather than taking them, it is a corruption of reality, effectively a lie at the expense of lost capital and declining economies or growth rates etc. This means that the left wing’s entire case is based on lies. They cannot win a fair argument because their entire ideology is corrupt. This means they must change definitions of words and lie to basically win a debate. This is why words such as right wing and fascism have been corrupted.

Because left wing or Constructivism is a corruption of the system and will always fail, just as it changes the meaning of words, it must also change history, either by redefining it, or by saying it wasn’t socialism that was the problem but the way it was implemented.

 It is also why you, and the left wing generally, cannot admit the truth that the riots in the UK are due to the public concern about immigration and declining living standards, as to do so, would see your entire ideological universe collapse.

To be honest, I don’t blame you. The real problem lies with the Conservatives who have forgotten what Conservatism is about and have therefore been unable to resist the move leftwards and the corruption of reality. They offer soundbites of low taxes and reduced regulations, but clearly don’t understand why it is so important. Until they start embracing the right wing and the freedom and prosperity that the correct allocation of capital brings, then they are just competing with you on the left wing for who will do most damage to society. 

Whilst you are taking ever more power trying to hold the edifice of big government together, which I’m sure you will succeed with in the short term, you must remember that as every bit of control you take is a misallocation of capital, not creating the utility to pay for itself, it is also a step closer to its eventual demise. 

With the Internet now offering competition of information, such that the system can clear to the truth rather than of it to the government created narrative, hopefully the time of big government, and the corruption that it is, will soon come to an end, before you do too much more damage.

Yours faithfully,

One of the 80% of the public that didn’t vote for you...

How can we restore trust in our public institutions — governments, universities, media, science and medicine — when the government spends $100 million to create “cognitive vaccines”: a mix of propaganda and censorship strategies designed to “protect” the public from dissenting viewpoints?

This question was the focal point of the “Council of the Canceled,” a discussion broadcast live on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday, hosted by Nicole Shanahan and featuring Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Eric Weinstein, Ph.D., and Mike Benz.

The panel — experts who have faced censorship and de-platforming — delved into the complex web of government-funded research, corporate interests and institutional practices they allege are eroding public trust and stifling the debate that is indispensable to science and democracy.

“We’d like to restructure consensus-building so that … governance represents the people,” said Shanahan, a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur and the vice-presidential running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) chairman on leave.

The participants explored how this might be achieved in the face of what they described as coordinated efforts to control public opinion and suppress alternative viewpoints.

Benz, a former U.S. Department of State official and founder of Foundation for Freedom Online, discussed the concept of cognitive or psychological “vaccines” developed by academic institutions with government funding.

“They have glitzy 10-minute promo videos,” he said, describing attempts to create psychological inoculations against what authorities deem “fake news.”

The panelists agreed that these programs, far from protecting democracy, are undermining it by attempting to preemptively discredit dissenting voices.

Dissenting voices often labeled as fringe or dangerous

The panel painted a stark picture of eroding trust across multiple pillars of society: government, media, universities and scientific institutions. Each speaker shared experiences and insights illustrating how actions meant to build consensus have instead fostered skepticism and distrust.

Bhattacharya, a Stanford University professor of health policy, shared his experience of how institutional narrative control has undermined credibility in public health.

He pointed to the Great Barrington Declaration that he co-authored, which the Center for Science and Democracy labeled a “fringe idea” because it advocated for focused protection of vulnerable individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The declaration was signed by 30,000 medical and public health scientists and practitioners and over 1 million others.

Benz pointed to the amendment of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which lifted the ban against domestic dissemination of U.S. government-produced propaganda, giving rise to the censorship-industrial complex.

Weinstein, a mathematician, economist and founder of The Portal Group, described how academic institutions have become entangled with national security interests.

He shared an anecdote about the University of Chicago’s economics department, suggesting it was partially set up as a “bulwark against totalitarian communism, funded from inside the intelligence world.”

This intertwining of academia and national security, he argued, has led to a situation where dissenting voices are often labeled as fringe or dangerous.

“There’s this thing with an adjective, a profession, and then a proper name,” he said, giving the examples of “fringe epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya” and “controversial professor Jordan Peterson” — labels meant to signal the public to be skeptical of or avoid such individuals.

The panel also discussed the erosion of trust in science, particularly in light of controversial research practices.

Bhattacharya brought up gain-of-function research. “Tony Fauci signed off on these experiments,” he said, mentioning that in a 2012 paper Fauci “explicitly wrote that even if these experiments result in a worldwide pandemic, it’ll be worth it because of the knowledge gained.”

The panelists also discussed how de-platforming, narrative control and censorship have contributed to a loss of faith in traditional media outlets that were once trusted to be objective and unbiased.

Harvard’s English department will be featuring a “Queer/Medieval” class in the upcoming spring 2025 semester. The course will be an “introduction to queer theory as an intellectual tool with which to read texts far removed from the political, cultural, and social discourses from which queer theory emerged,” specifically, in this case, medieval texts. 

“We will ask: what can queer theory offer readers of medieval literature in its explorations of gender, sexuality, race, power, narrative, trauma, and time?” the course description states. 

The course will use the lens of “queer theory” to examine classic medieval texts such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

In January 2019, Kamala Harris launched her 2020 presidential campaign in Oakland. On Friday, Kamala Harris secured enough votes to become the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, hours after her supporters rallied in her hometown of Oakland.

As some put it, “Oakland is all in for Kamala.”

The last time Oakland had a Republican mayor was in 1977.

This is a city that is completely and utterly dominated by the Democrats.

Under their rule, it has become a cesspool of drugs, homelessness, violence and theft.  Here is just one example of how incredibly lawless Oakland has become…

In early July, a mob of 80 to 100 looters barged into an Oakland gas station and convenience store and stripped the business bare.

According to the New York Post, the mob originated nearby at a so-called sideshow, which is essentially lawless street racing that’s become common in Oakland.

It was bad enough that the store was hit by looters, but what made it worse is that the police took nine hours to respond, according to the owner.

It took nine hours for the police to show up.

Nine hours.

A few years ago, Kamala Harris was one of the politicians that was publicly calling for police budgets to be reduced.

When you do that, this is what happens.

At this point, Oakland is so lawless that it even has a “major problem” with pirates…

Oh, and pirates—yes, pirates—are a major problem in the waters around Oakland. The pirates reportedly come from the city’s myriad homeless encampments. Police have made a few arrests, but the problem now seems endemic in Oakland’s harbors.

California liberalism has transformed Oakland into one of the worst cities in North America.

And if she is given the opportunity, Kamala Harris will impose California liberalism on the whole nation.

Other cities that have been ruled by Democrats for decades are experiencing similar results.

Just look at what is happening to Seattle.  One man recently ventured into downtown Seattle in the middle of the night, and the footage that he captured looks like something out of a horror show.

At one point in my life, I spent some time in the Seattle area.

I can hardly believe what has happened to that once great city.

Of course the entire country is going downhill really fast.  According to a new report that was just released, shoplifting in the United States increased by 24 percent during the first half of this year…

Shoplifting increased by 24 percent in the first half of 2024, according to the Council on Criminal Justice’s mid-year report, even as other crime levels decreased.

In many cases, shoplifting is seen as a “crime of necessity” for low-income Americans. As inflation continues to impact both businesses and families, shoplifting rates have surged even higher.

“Shoplifting as such a widespread crime during a time of high inflation is actually quite common when you look at similar times from other countries in the past,” Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek. “The one-two punch that consumers face is not just higher prices, but also a drawback of additional financial resources they would normally qualify for because of their current employment and income outlook.”

Shoplifting was already at record levels coming into this year.

And now it has jumped another 24 percent?

That is insane.

In some of our major cities, shoplifting is wildly out of control.  Recently, one reporter spoke to a woman that works at a CVS location in Washington D.C. where there is constant theft…

The Center Square spoke with a 38-year-old woman who goes by “Jones” who works at a CVS within eyeshot of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

Jones told The Center Square that shoplifters take from her store daily.

When Jones does see customers steal something, she doesn’t stop them.

“We don’t get paid for that,” she said.

This is happening right in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol building.

When something is stolen, this woman says that employees are not even supposed to contact the police.  Instead, they are just supposed to write down what was stolen on a clipboard…

She said procedure is not to notify police but to write a description of the thief and what was stolen down on a form on a clipboard. Jones’ clipboard has seemingly a hundred pages stacked, at least one for each day, many of them filled with reported incidents.

By 11:15 am Thursday morning when Jones spoke with The Center Square, the store had already been stolen from four times that day, at least as far as she knew.

This is what anarchy looks like.

And the chaos in our major cities is constantly getting worse, because the Biden administration refuses to secure the border.

It is being reported that the most violent gang in Venezuela has decided to move its headquarters to a city in Mexico that is directly across the border from El Paso, Texas…

Venezuela’s most violent gang, which has already sparked chaos across the US, has moved its headquarters to the outskirts of a major American city, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.

Dubbed the ‘epitome of evil’, the notorious criminal organization Tren de Aragua, or TdA as it is known by federal agents, previously operated out of an infamous South American prison so completely under gang leaders’ control that it had its own zoo, swimming pool and nightclub.

But after kingpin Hector Guerrero Flores escaped last year, the mafia moved its command center to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico on the US border – directly across from El Paso, Texas, local officials told DailyMail.com.

Since the border is wide open, this new location gives this gang the perfect staging ground for conducting operations inside the United States.

In fact, this gang has already become extremely active in major cities far from the border such as Denver and New York…

A memo by the Department of Homeland Security recently revealed that the TDA members in Denver have been given a ‘green light’ to shoot or attack police officers, reported Fox News.

The gang is also thought to have joined forces with other criminal networks in New York, unleashing violent schemes including brazen moped phone thefts.

According to NBC News, Joe Biden “tapped Kamala Harris to tackle the daunting issue of immigration in March 2021”.

Obviously that didn’t work out too well.

But now we are just supposed to ignore all that.

And we are just supposed to ignore the endless chaos in our major cities.

They are telling us that we should vote for Kamala Harris because she will bring “change” to America.

Based on the “change” that we have witnessed in her hometown, I don’t know why anyone would ever want that. (read more)

The conservative influencers despairing at the apparent “energy” behind the DNC’s astroturfed social media rollout for Harris are in error. This race is Trump’s to lose. Kamala has no shot at legitimately winning the 2024 Presidential election. 

She is an absurd candidate running a ridiculous campaign. She is clearly not the consensus pick of the Democratic party for the presidency. We know this because no voter ever cast a ballot for her in the primary. Moreover, her appearance in the race is entirely inorganic—the product of Democrat insiders deposing the sitting president from running again for an office he very much insisted he should hang onto. 

Kamala is not a legitimate candidate for President. She is not popular. She is not inspiring. She has no base of support. She has no cogent policy proposals to better the country. She is a terrible public speaker with little to no grasp of national politics. She was airdropped into the 2024 campaign because her boss couldn’t string together a coherent sentence. She was selected as VP in the first place because she is a [pretend] Black woman.

Should the DC regime install Kamala, it will mean the end of our constitutional order and of free and fair elections. Kamala cannot legitimately win the presidency. Should the media declare her the winner on November 6, it would be an absurdity on the scale of journalists insisting that North Korean elections are free and fair.

Kamala’s campaign is the ultimate ritual humiliation for the American electorate. The 2020 results were bad enough. The DNC coup to remove Biden from the 2024 ticket was a stunning public admission that he was never the “most popular candidate” of all time and that the 81 million “votes” he “won” in 2020 were a mirage cooked up by ballot-harvesting, COVID protocols, and outright fraud.

American voters stomached, barely, that illegitimate result because Trump always had the potential to come back. As long as there was a reasonable possibility of Trump winning, voters were willing to tolerate the absurdity of the Biden “victory.” The legitimacy of the American electoral system therefore rests entirely on Trump’s shoulders.

The regime cannot survive the installation of another astroturfed and unpopular political leader into the highest office in the land. The weight of the sheer ridiculousness of it all will bring faith in our system of government crashing to the ground.

No reasonable person can believe that Kamala has any shot in this race. The entire Democrat campaign for the presidency has had to retool on the fly—they need new signs, a new rally schedule, and a new message—with only a dozen weeks to go in the race. Kamala possesses the worst of both worlds. As vice president, she both completely owns the legacy of the current administration but also has no real policy accomplishments to point to. Her brief foray as “border czar” was an unmitigated disaster

Harris has no real contact with voters either. In the 2020 Democratic primary, Kamala did so badly in early polls and was beaten so soundly by Tulsi Gabbard in an early debate that she had to drop out before voting in Iowa even occurred.

Kamala Harris isn’t just bad with voters; even her closest allies and staff dislike her. As California attorney general, she insisted that her subordinates greet her every day with a “Good Morning, General” and refused to engage with low-level employees. Her office as vice president was known to be a hive of discontent with an extremely high turnover rate.

Harris is a political radical once labeled the most liberal senator by GovTrack. She raised bail money for communist rioters during the 2020 riots. She supports gun confiscation and giving free healthcare to illegals. This isn’t popular among any significant sector of the American electorate.

As it stands now, only a few thousand voters have even seen Kamala in person as a candidate. I have yet to see a single yard sign with her name on it anywhere I go here in Michigan. She is behind the power curve by months. Trump has already made multiple enormous public appearances in all of the swing states. Kamala isn’t even close to that kind of ground game. 

Whatever anyone in the media might say, politicians actually need to campaign. Kamala Harris cannot simply argue that she can win a national election by simply existing. The media already did that with Biden in 2020, with terrible results for Americans’ faith in our democratic form of government. 

Not only is Kamala a train wreck in her own right, but Donald Trump has never been more popular than he is right now. The lawfare cases against him are in freefall. His rallies have never been bigger, his message has never been sharper, and his supporters have never been more vocal. Major Silicon Valley figures and investors like Elon Musk are lining up behind Trump.

To top it all off, Trump miraculously survived an assassination attempt on live television in heroic fashion. Trump’s enormous display of physical courage in the aftermath is one of the most iconic images in American electoral history. His chant of “fight, fight, fight” continues to energize his supporters.

The media and DNC can pretend that didn’t happen, but voters will remember Trump’s awe-inspiring display of valor.

Trump is an unstoppable force in American politics. He has enormous support from the American middle and working class. His signs dot the landscape. The lines for his rallies stretch for miles outside of every venue where he speaks.

Kamala doesn’t stand a chance. Only outright fraud could possibly elevate her to the presidency, and that move would instantly destroy the last pillar of legitimacy holding up our political order.

Kamala is a line in the sand. If she can be installed in the presidency, then there is no reason to keep holding elections; the DNC and its media apparatchiks can simply make or break the presidency with a snap of the fingers. In this scenario, there is no longer any reason for patriotic Americans to serve or support the regime in DC. They must withdraw their consent and search for new guards for their future security. 

The 2024 Trump campaign sent the liberal hivemind into fits of hysteria. There is nothing these people wouldn’t do in order to keep Trump and his centrist policies of preserving our sovereignty and national renewal out of the White House. This is a deeply unstable time in American life. 

We can be certain of one thing, however: Kamala is not going to win a fair election in November. It is impossible. (read more)

Within a day of ex-President Trump’s announcement of “climate denier” Mr. J. D. Vance as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, the climate industrial complex and supportive mainstream media had the knives out. A few headlines of the past 24 hours are an indication.

The New York Times: “JD Vance Is an Oil Booster and Doubter of Human-Caused Climate Change”

The Independent: JD Vance: “Climate activists alarmed by Trump’s ‘dangerous’ pick for vice president”

The Guardian: “Climate advocates fear picking JD Vance for VP is ‘a dangerous step backward’”

The umbrage taken by media commentators is familiar. CNBC laments that “the former venture capitalist though is a known critic of climate change and renewable energy [italics added].” UK’s The Independent newspaper reports that “[c]ampaigners are responding with alarm to the selection of climate denier and Ohio senator JD Vance as Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee, with activists warning he represents a “dangerous” voice for the US.” Mr. Vance’s “eagerness to please Donald Trump” adds to the image of the vice-presidential nominee as an unprincipled politician seeking office.

Climate advocacy group Fossil Free Media spokesperson Cassidy DiPaola asserted that "This [VP] choice signals that a potential Trump-Vance administration would likely double down on fossil fuel expansion at a time when we desperately need to transition to clean energy.” Communications director Stevie O’Hanlon of Sunrise Movement, a climate activist organization, said that “Like Donald Trump, JD Vance has proven that he will make it a top priority to roll back climate protections while answering to the demands of oil and gas CEOs.”

Does Mr. Vance have a principled stand and is his stance on climate and energy policy worthy of consideration?

Climate Denialism

As the highly polarized debate over climate change over the past few decades has amply demonstrated, the discourse often descends into ad hominem attacks and name calling. “Climate denier” is a charge that is often used by proponents of climate alarm to shut down critical debate and to deplatform climate sceptics. Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Evergreen Action, said this of Mr. Vance: “Donald Trump has chosen an avowed climate denier as his running mate who has used his time in Congress to vote against the environment and shill for fossil fuel corporations at every opportunity.”

The “denier” accusation is among the more pernicious if popular epithets used to denigrate sceptics of the so-called “consensus science.” It invokes a comparison to those who engage in Holocaust denial. To be sure, most observers would consider it ludicrous to suggest that questioning the accuracy and predictive power of scientific models is like questioning the historical fact of the genocide of Jews in Europe.

What Is Mr. Vance’s Position on Climate?

Putting aside epithets and journalistic hit-pieces, it seems a fair question to ask just what do politicians skeptical of the climate alarmist narrative believe? And what are their policy positions regarding the Paris Agreement’s “net zero by 2050” target. This policy target is an imperative, at least nominally, for most current governments in North America and Western Europe?

Mr. Vance – lawyer, businessman, former Marine and writer of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”, arisen from the humblest working class background – places himself firmly in the populist right movement. It now looks very likely that Mr. Trump will be the next US president. The assassination attempt on Saturday, his miraculous split-second turn of the head which saved him and the iconic picture of his raised fist with the US flag in the background seconds after being injured make him almost irresistible. Thus Mr. Vance will likely join the Donald Trump next year as his VP in an administration that will seek to rapidly unwind the myriad policy and regulatory constraints that the Biden administration has imposed to shackle the US oil and gas industry at every turn.

Vance has also criticized the “green energy fantasy” of the Biden administration, pointing out that “solar panels can’t power a modern manufacturing economy” and “that’s why the Chinese are building coal power plants.” He has similarly called out wind power turbines. At the Turning Point Action conference last year, he said “they’re hideously ugly. They kill all the birds. And they’re mostly made in China.” The Biden administration’s all-out support for EVs comes in for the same critique. In a July 2022 radio interview, he said: “The whole EV thing is a scam. If you plug it into your wall, do these people think there are Keebler elves back there making electricity in the wall? It comes, of course, from fossil fuels.”

Mr. Vance’s climate skepticism goes beyond encouraging US oil and gas dominance in global markets once again – a strong theme of Trump’s first term in office – if the Republicans get elected to office. He has come out fiercely against the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) movement. In an interview with Breitbart in 2022, he said “ESG is basically a massive racket to enrich Wall Street and enrich the financial sector of the country, at the expense of the industries that actually employ a lot of Ohio’s workers for middle-class jobs.” The push against ESG occurring through the red states in the U.S. and the increasingly evident lack of success of ESG-focused firms and investment advisors suggests that Mr. Vance has probably got a better finger on the pulse than his critics would care to admit.

Who’s More Credible?

As a climate change skeptic, Mr. Vance stands in good company. For instance, the 2022 Nobel Laureate in physics John Clauser exposed in a recent lecture how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models and analyses do not meet basic standards of scientific enquiry.  IPCC models have been used as “proof” of scientific consensus by politicians and activists to support claims of a “climate crisis.” Another example would be Richard Lindzen, an American atmospheric physicist and Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who published an assessment of the global warming narrative in 2022. Prof. Lindzen finds climate alarmism “a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative. The policies invoked on behalf of this movement have led to the US hobbling its energy system.” Whatever one’s views on climate science, it is apparent that Mr. Vance is not a wild-eyed outlier in his skepticism of the claims of climate policy advocates as asserted by his many critics.

JD Vance’s criticisms of subsidy-supported renewable energy and EV sectors accord with the empirical evidence emerging in the current context of higher inflation, higher interest rates and a deep slump in renewable energy stocks. For instance, an Associated Press report last November described the travails of the Biden administration’s ambitious plans for offshore wind: “The cancellation of two large offshore wind projects in New Jersey is the latest in a series of setbacks for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, jeopardizing the Biden administration’s goals of powering 10 million homes from towering ocean-based turbines by 2030 and establishing a carbon-free electric grid five years later.” This news was preceded by earlier reports of developers cancelling three offshore wind power projects in New England. They said their projects were “no longer financially feasible” despite the ample subsidies on offer.

The news on the EV front, called out as a “scam” by Mr. Vance, is just as dire for green technology enthusiasts. As David Blackmon, a keen observer of the renewable energy space, notes: surveys show that the vast majority of US car buyers will not purchase an EV even at “bargain basement” prices (and despite government subsidies); the overall growth in private EV sales in the US has slowed “to a trickle”, just as is happening in the UK and EU; and the market for used EVs is practically non-existent. “Pure play” EV maker Fisker recently declared bankruptcy while Rivian approaches the same fate. Giant US automakers GM and Ford have turned to gasoline-powered vehicles to sustain their profits as the global EV sales slowdown force them to delay investments and cuts costs in their EV production lines.

Partisans may criticize the man all they want, but the realities of thermodynamics and economics support JD Vance. He may prove to be the best Vice President in a Republican administration geared to supporting the country’s oil and gas industries and Making America Great Again. (read more)

It started a few weeks ago like this: Trump, the presidential candidate who must not win, is up against Biden, the presidential candidate who must win. After the first debate, it was immediately clear: Trump will win against Biden. The big problem: Biden and Jill are about the only ones who don’t realize this.

The media then turned against Biden. That, in itself, is a revolution. They had praised President Biden to the skies for four years, turning a blind eye to the fact that the man either seemed hardly aware of what he was saying or was giving speeches that could only be described as having the characteristics of a fascist’s discourse.

I’m thinking, among other things, of the 2022 midterm speech in which he, against a bombastic-dramatic backdrop and flanked by two soldiers with machine guns, more or less directly called for violence against the MAGA followers. Not to mention the shameless prosecution and imprisonment of political opponents and the intimidation and excommunication of hundreds of journalists (carefully kept out of the media by journalists who sided with the regime).

Huxley would not be surprised that Biden claims in almost every speech that he had to save democracy, including his most recent speech. I’ve shared the quote of Huxley below before, but it doesn’t hurt to read it a second time:

By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms — elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest — will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial — but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.

Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

In any case, the media’s love for Biden was suddenly over when it became clear that he could not possibly win the election, even not with a little help from the media [& biased search engines & phantom voters & Rep. Clyburn's AME miscounters & courts neutered by those who are really in charge]. If you want to know how that ‘little help’ worked in 2020, look at one of the most important interviews of the past year, where Mike Benz – former director of the cyber portfolio of the US government – explains to Tucker Carlson in detail how information flows on the internet were manipulated during the 2020 elections (and the Covid [manufactured] crisis). The guy eventually got disgusted with what he was doing and now runs a project striving for online freedom of speech.  I would recommend everyone to spend an hour watching that interview. Such an explanation is what we need: calm, expert, nuanced, and extraordinarily revealing.

After the first debate, the media realized that even they could not help Biden win the election. They changed their approach. Biden was quickly stripped of his saintly status. The Veil of Appearances was pulled away, and he suddenly stood naked and vulnerable in the eye of the mainstream – a man in the autumn of his life, mentally confused, addicted to power, and arrogant. Some journalists even started attributing traits of the Great Narcissistic Monster Trump to him.

But even media pressure couldn’t make Biden change his mind. He was so far gone that he did not see the hopelessness of his situation. That did not change when the Democratic elite turned their backs on him. Barack, Hillary, Nancy – it didn’t matter, the presidential candidate who couldn’t win kept stumbling in a lost race.

Then things took another turn, a turn so predictable that one is astonished that it actually happened. An overaged teenager calmly climbed onto a roof with a sniper rifle, under the watchful eyes of the security services, and nearly shot Trump in the head. The security services, which initially did not respond for minutes when people tried to draw attention to the overaged teenager with an assault rifle, suddenly reacted decisively: they shot the overaged teenager dead seconds after the assassination attempt.

What happened there? There are many reasons to have reservations about Trump, but one thing we cannot help but say: if Trump becomes president, the war in Ukraine will be over. Anyone who does not attribute any weight to that should subject themselves to a conscience examination. And no, Trump will not have to give half of Europe to Putin for that. My cautious estimate, for what it’s worth: It will suffice for NATO to stop and partially reverse its eastward expansion, for Russia to retain access to the Black Sea via Crimea (something everyone with historical awareness knows that denying would mean the death blow to Russia as a great power and thus a direct declaration of war), and for the population of the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine to choose in a referendum whether to belong to Russia or Ukraine.

One of the biggest and most dangerous media lies of this time is that Putin started an ‘unprovoked war’ in Ukraine. I recommend a second interview by Tucker Carlson here (undoubtedly one of the most important contemporary journalists, one of the few who still fulfill the original societal function of journalism). The interview with professor and former top diplomat Jeffrey Sachs also has everything a good interview should have: given with great expertise, calm, and nuanced. Anyone who still believes that the war in Ukraine was ‘unprovoked’ after listening to it is kindly invited to explain themselves in the comments section of this article.

So, I repeat my point: with Trump, the provocation of Russia stops, and the war in Ukraine ends. Presidents who threaten to end wars are sometimes shot at by lone gunmen. And those lone gunmen are, in turn, shot dead. And the archives about that remarkable act of lone gunmen sometimes remain sealed for a remarkably long time, much longer than they usually do.

The media ultimately covered this historical event of the Trump assassination attempt surprisingly lightly. No journalist to be found pointed a finger at Biden because he had more or less literally called to ‘target’ Trump a few months earlier. Let alone the media admitting that they created the unspoken support in the population for this political violence. Neither did I find journalists who were greatly concerned that the overaged teenager was linked to Antifa – nothing wrong with Antifa according to them. I can imagine that the moral appreciation would have been different if an overaged teenager linked to the MAGA movement had nearly taken down President Biden.

Anyway, we are not surprised. That reaction was predictable. We are used to the media. Some journalists even suggested that Trump had been shot with a paintball, others thought the most accurate way to report was that someone ‘wounded Trump on the ear.’

In any case, after the assassination attempt, the situation became even more dire for the mainstream: the presidential candidate who must not win is now even more popular, and his victory in a race with Biden is almost inevitable.

Then the next chapter begins. Biden suddenly changes his mind: he has come to his senses and drops out of the race. He announces this – of all things – in a letter with a signature that, even for his shaky condition, looked quite clumsy. Then he stayed out of the public eye for a few days. We are curious about what exactly happened there.

But the media are compliant again. Biden has now been sanctified again. Just like Kamala Harris, of course. They are already mentioning polls showing she will beat Trump. With a little help from the media, of course. Curious how this will continue, but I would be surprised if the rest of the campaign will be a walk in the park. Trump is not safe after the first attempt, that’s for sure. And to Kamala Harris, I say this: when totalitarian systems go into a chaotic phase, they become monsters that devour their own children.

[Editor's Note: See Jacques Mallet du Pan, "A l'exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants" in Considérations sur la nature de la Révolution de France, et sur les causes qui en prolongent la durée (1793). See also: Georg Büchner, "Die Revolution ist wie Saturn, sie frißt ihre eignen Kinder."]

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It is hard to ignore: the indoctrination and propaganda model is creaking and groaning at all its seams. The Veil of Appearances that is meant to hide all dirty laundry from the public eye is tearing left and right. And that’s why the step toward terror is increasingly being taken. One can see something frightening in it, but it also heralds the beginning of the end of the propaganda model. No one knows exactly how long the endgame will last, but it is certain that the system is in deep crisis. From the fact that the Democrats ran with someone like Biden and then had to force him out in this amateurish and transparent manner, we can only conclude one thing with certainty: the desperation must be enormous.

What we are witnessing is nothing less than the failure of the greatest propaganda apparatus in history. And at that point, we also see a fact that people absorbed by conspiracy thinking make: they overestimate the perceived enemy not only as too evil but also (much) too powerful. In this way, one can only feel smaller and feel more and more powerlessness, anger, and hate, exactly the sentiments that will prove deadly in the coming years.

The general reduction of everything that happens to a conspiracy, not seeing a Reality behind the manipulation and illusions created, is itself a symptom of this time. Conspiracies exist. No one needs to convince me of that. And one problem of this time is that most people who identify with the mainstream discourse have a remarkable ability to deny that. And they have an equally great ability to ignore that they themselves eagerly produce conspiracy theories when it comes to Putin or Saddam Hussein or ‘extreme right.’

Conspiracy theories sometimes correctly relate to facts, and sometimes incorrectly. However, they do not provide a comprehensive explanation for global events. They do not touch the essence of the problem. The essence of the problem lies in rationalism and the associated human arrogance. And this hubris is certainly not the privilege of ‘the elite.’ It is even typical of conspiracy thinking itself, which ultimately attempts to capture the essence of social dynamics through a rationalistic construction. And precisely because of this, conspiracy thinking, just like the dominant discourse, falls prey to Babylonian confusion. Like the dominant discourse, they fail to bring true peace regarding the Real that increasingly imposes itself from behind the Veil of Appearances in this historical era.

In times when America is dangerously heading towards a civil war, the golden advice is: do not be tempted by the possibility of violence. Stay calm and composed. And continue to speak. Totalitarianism dehumanizes; the only remedy against totalitarianism is to always recognize a human being in the Other. Also in the Totalitarian Other. What is happening is historical. Stand on the right side of history. This is not the side of the Democrats or the side of the Republicans, it is not the side of Trump or the side of Harris; it is the side of humanity, it is the side of those who are not so convinced of their own words that they can no longer find any space for the words of the Other to exist. (read more)

Four days ago a 17-year-old allegedly walked into a children’s “Taylor Swift dance class” (whatever that might be)  in Southport and started stabbing little girls, wounding 10 and killing 3.

It was initially reported the boy was a muslim immigrant.

This story was, however, reversed within hours, the new story “revealing” that he was actually born in Cardiff, the son of Rwandan immigrants. He was named as “Axel Muganwa Rudakubana” late yesterday.

His  religious affiliation, if any, seems not to have been firmly established.

Another young man was, allegedly,  arrested later while in possession of a machete and balaclava at  a vigil for the victims. He was, again, reportedly Muslim.

This, allegedly, resulted in what are described as protests and riots, the destruction of a brick wall outside a mosque and the burning of a police van.

Further alleged riots subsequently sprang up in London and Hartlepool.

This is the current narrative. None of the details has been substantiated as yet, so how much you decide to believe is your personal preference at this point.

At OffG we reserve the right to be sceptical. Of everything.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, and the current level of  “mourning” by government institutions and groups in no way directly affected  by the tragedy always has a taint of the performative that shouldn’t be too quickly conflated with  insincerity or worse.

And, of course, all of this is coming hot on the heels of the Manchester Airport incident, where police officers and Muslim youths allegedly clashed violently in as yet obscure circumstances.

Plus the violence in Whitechapel and Leeds a couple of weeks ago.

Then, as now, both sides were provided with adequate rage-bait to get them worked up.

Whatever the truth of this latest incident, and whatever long term aims it might be used to further, this “strategy of tension” has an immediate political agenda already becoming clear – and it’s as predictable as ever.

1. Further limit social media/free speech
2. Normalise constant surveillance

Attacking free speech is the ever-present, eternal agenda that comes before everything else and it’s been a real pile-on the last few days.

The Hill headlines “Misinformation floods social media in wake of breakneck news cycle”, Sky News went with “Southport attack misinformation fuels far-right discourse on social media”

ABC News reports: “Online misinformation fueled tensions over the stabbing attack in Britain that killed 3 children”

The Byline Times collectively scolds society’s negligence: “‘We All Need To Consider Our Role in the Wild West of Social Media Hypercriminality’”

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (an NGO funded by the usual suspects) has timelined it all for our convenience: From rumours to riots: How online misinformation fuelled violence in the aftermath of the Southport attack

The BBC asks “Did social media fan the flames of riot in Southport?” and Telepgraph answers very much in the affirmative, cutting right to the heart of the matter [emphasis added]:

Unregulated social media disinformation is wrecking Britain – Free speech must come with accountability

The Times skips past establishing the problem right to apportioning blame: “Who is behind Southport social media storm — and can they be stopped?”

The Guardian has decided the answer is TikTok (and AI): “How TikTok bots and AI have powered a resurgence in UK far-right violence”

The New York Times demands to know what social media companies are going to do about it:

The U.K. Riots Were Fomented Online. Will Social Media Companies Act?

One particularly drunk uncle decided the whole thing is Putin’s fault, for some reason, but most of the fire is directed at Twitter/X.

Writing in Prospect, former-Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger claims “Elon Musk’s misinformation machine made the horrors of Southport much worse”, while Forbes wails “Elon Musk Isn’t Stopping Misinformation, He’s Helped Spread It”.

This is dual-purpose propaganda, it attacks the idea of free speech but also reinforces Musk/X’s totally false reputation as the savior of free expression.

You cannot begin to fathom how irritating it is to the ruling class that ordinary people are allowed to just say whatever they want whenever they want – including having the audacity to fact check the media in real time, with no repercussions at all.

That, more than anything else, has stalled the Great Reset in its tracks.

So it has to go.

Finally and forever.

It’s why  almost everything in the news cycle – from disease to climate change – can  allegedly be “solved” with censorship.

Because once free speech is abolished everything that comes afterward gets so much easier – including the second agenda being pushed right now: Mass surveillance and facial recognition technology.

When it comes to this secondary goal the media are yet to reach the “call for action” phase. They are still locked into “fearmongering”, with widespread warnings about nineteen future “far-right” marches and calls to proscribe Tommy Robinson’s EDL as a “terrorist organization”

Which, again, has the useful secondary effect of making this gentleman look more like a genuine force for opposition.

Funnily enough, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was already discussing giving police “new powers to crackdown on antisocial behaviour” just a day before the Southport attack occurred.

But it fell to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to formally lay it out in his address yesterday afternoon [transcript].

Pledging to counter the “far-right” with a new police division, and increased use of surveillance and facial recognition technology to “limit their movements”:

Wider deployment of facial recognition technology…And preventive action – criminal behaviour orders…To restrict their movements…

And firing a warning shot across the bows of social media:

And let me also say to large social media companies and those who run them…Violent disorder clearly whipped up online…That is also a crime. It’s happening on your premises. And the law must be upheld everywhere.

He even pointedly made clear his response wasn’t just about now or about countering the “far-right”, rather it was about ALL civil disobedience, for any reason:

A response both to the immediate challenge which is clearly driven by far-right hatred. But als “all violent disorder that flares up […] whatever the apparent cause or motivation – we make no distinction…Crime is crime.”

That means everything.

It means pro-free speech rallies, it means “bladerunners” cutting down ULEZ cameras. It means any potential anti-lockdown and/or anti-vaccine mandate protests during “the next pandemic”.

This is the beginning of a new crackdown on digital free speech and real-world protest…

and people are cheering him on, of course. Because they believe the State is our only shield from the nasty brick throwing baddies of the far-right.

To sum up the last three days in British politics for those not well versed in reading past headlines  and propaganda:

For the cost of one broken wall and a burnt out police van, the new “Labour” government have just won public approval  for new police powers and open season being called on  what remains of our free speech – and they get to distract from the now-inevitable tax raises too.

Not a bad trade. (read more)

— Ethical Skeptic (@EthicalSkeptic) July 4, 2024