We are, at present, witness to a bizarre cultural cognitive dissonance, where we collectively agree, for the most part, that pharmaceutical corporations are hives of corruption and greed, who care nothing for the safety of their products if it means they can turn a profit. To the culture at large this applies to almost every pharmaceutical product with the glaring exception of one: vaccines. For some reason, the products manufactured and sold by these untrustworthy, corporate criminals can suddenly be trusted almost blindly if that product happens to be a vaccine. And the same people lambasting these companies for their role in the long series of drug scandals that have results in hundreds of thousands of deaths, will turn on a dime and begin viciously attacking anyone criticizing vaccines, which, again, are nothing more than a pharmaceutical product.

I don’t understand how it’s possible to walk around with such a massive contradiction in their mind and be comfortable with it.

I say this because it now appears that the corporate media has received its marching orders on promoting another pharmaceutical product: the HPV vaccine. The dry, unoriginal, boilerplate editorials are emerging out of whatever sweatshop that is employed to crank out such garbage in support of the HPV vaccine, touting it as some alleged miracle preventative cure for cervical cancer, despite the fact that it has never been proven to prevent cervical cancer. It has, however, caused rampant, debilitating injury in many of the teen and preteen girls that received the series of HPV vaccines beginning in Australia in 2007.

I’m currently immersed in the book, HPV Vaccine on Trial: Seeking Justice For a Generation Betrayed, one that will be instrumental in ending the bizarre cult surrounding vaccines, particularly those vaccines that target infections and illnesses that are either exceedingly mild, rare, or that have effective treatment options already available. The information in this book is so important that I will begin live-blogging each chapter, beginning tomorrow. As a preliminary remark, I will say that one of the most dangerous aspects of this vaccine is the sense of false confidence in those who receive it. Having been vaccinated, they’ll forgo the traditional pap smear, or the more recent DNA tests, thereby increasing the likelihood of HPV cancer later in life. As I said, there’s no proof that the HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer, yet it is touted as manna from heaven, a pure gift of Science, and people buy into it because it is in vaccine form.

KELLEY VLAHOS: How Justin Raimondo made me a braver writer

TOM WOODS: Justin Raimondo, RIP

LEW ROCKWELL: Justin Raimondo, RIP

Chronicles Mag: In Memoriam: Justin Raimondo, 1951-2019

National Review: Justin Raimondo, RIP Ed: This one is more back-handed, written with the barely-concealed envy of a writer painfully inferior to the subject of the obituary. NR has been nothing more than a pro-war rag for years, with so much disposable, and forgettable, daily content.

San Francisco Chronicle: Justin Raimondo, longtime Bay area activist and writer, dies

Amazing interview:

It was announced on Antiwar.com earlier today that Justin Raimondo has died at the age of 67 after a two-year battle with lung cancer. An energetic and intransigent advocate for peace and liberty, he was gifted with a writing ability that left all others in the dust. His style of writing, and his passion, compelled me to make my own feeble attempt at the craft, and his writing was virtually my sole inspiration at the time I created Republic Reborn, back in 2014. His writing made me appreciate the persuasive power of the written word when done well and with care, and I’ve eagerly read and reread his tri-weekly columns, not merely for the enjoyment, but also to glean lessons of composition and style. I had always meant to communicate with him in some way on the topic of writing, if only to gain insight into what it takes to write truly well. He probably was the most eloquent of the anti-war voices, and his death is a tragedy and a irreplaceable loss for the liberty/peace movement.

The staff at Antiwar.com published a wonderful obituary following his death earlier today, filled with more information than I’d ever known about early years, including his run-in with Ayn Rand’s fatuous Objectivist cult when he was just 14. The article paints a picture of an eternal, inveterate rebel and individualist, passionate about the philosophy of liberty and a desire to deliver it from the realm of ideas and imagination into this world as soon as possible. The entire corpus of his writing stands as an immortal testament to that spirit, an attitude that is certain to realize the ideal of liberty, if only enough of its advocates hold fast to it. What I loved about him, and what I’m sure others also loved about him, was that Raimondo never “evolved” or “matured” as many writers do when they allow their pockets to be filled by rich philanthropists and corporate-sponsored think tanks, committing the ultimate act of artistic perversion and selling their soul in exchange for a false, and fleeting, prestige among the wretched Political Class. Raimondo’s website, Antiwar.com, relied on the monthly donations of its readers to sustain it, thereby retaining its complete and utter independence from the monsters for whom Raimondo was an eternal adversary. He never abandoned his principles, even when the war madness was at its height, and when everyone seemed to succumb to it in the early days of the War on Terror. He was a hero to many, of a type bordering on extinction now, but one that Tennyson surely had in mind when composing Ulysses, and I can think of no more appropriate epitaph for someone who so deftly wielded steel among so much filth and decay of the Imperial perversion of a long-dead Republic:

The best of the best during the first Democratic debate:

Unsurprisingly, Tulsi got the Ron Paul treatment during the first debate: little speaking time, disproportionate attacks, etc. Yet it was impossible for NBC to make her look and sound like anything but a voice of reason among a throng of the most hide-bound corporate puppets imaginable. And despite the fawning over the corporate-backed candidates, it was equally impossible to make them look and sound anything other than old, frail, and fake. The candidates most favored by the Political Class came across as hideously insincere, particularly Warren and Biden. Well, all of them really. At each new question, Beto O’Rourke roused as if awaking from a stupor, giving the most banal, empty boilerplate answers in both English and Spanish. Buttigieg brags about military service, yet his only “service” consisted of sitting behind a desk from the safety of a military base for six months. In contrast, Tulsi deployed on two combat tours, and experienced real war. According to her sister, the stress of war gave Tulsi the signature streak of silver in her jet black hair. It also gave her a unique perspective on war, as well as her intransigent stance against the endless stream of regime-change wars that have ruined nation after nation in the Middle East. That type of talk is vanishingly rare coming from a Presidential candidate; we’ve only heard it once before from Ron Paul. It’s an unalloyed attack on Imperialism, no waffling, no fine print. It’s also a frontal assault on the Political Class, for whom war is their very lifeblood. They’ll come down on Tulsi hard, but it’s clear she is going to put up a hell of a fight. And, just as it was a blast to watch the corporate puppets from every sector panic over Ron Paul, so it will be with Tulsi.

PHILIP GIRALDI: How to start an unnecessary war

PAT BUCHANAN: Trump must choose: war president or anti-interventionist

Zero Hedge: Iran vows that path to diplomacy “closed forever” after latest US sanctions

DANIEL LARISON: The cruelty and arrogance of sanctions

TAC: Arms dealers and lobbyists get rich as Yemen burns

RT: 400+ 737 Max pilots sue Boeing over “unprecedented cover-up” that led to crashes and grounding

Here is an amazing 1982 documentary on the dangerous vaccine that led to the 1986 legislation that granted blanket legal immunity to vaccine manufacturers. The DPT vaccine caused rampant injury in children, and parents began to sue the bastards. The pharmaceutical companies threatened to stop producing vaccines altogether in the face of these lawsuits, so they were granted immunity. Watch before its removed from YouTube:

First it was Venezuela, and the war propaganda flowed fast and hot. Despite the disinformation blitzkrieg, the Political Class didn’t get the desired conflict. In hindsight, they probably realize their mistakes, chief among them being the choice of the wrong puppet to throw their weight behind, as Juan Guaido appeared to be an imbecile in every sense of the word, one that Maduro couldn’t bring himself to take seriously. He alternately laughed and ignored Guaido, seeing him for what he was: the useful idiot of a foreign power. And when was the last time we’ve heard about Guaido, or Maduro, or Venezuela?

Iran is now in the crosshairs, and the pedigreed and medalled filth that comprise the intellectual bodyguard of perpetual war have brought both countries to the brink. Iran shoots down a US spy drone, so the Political Class applies the pressure on Trump to retaliate. And it almost happened, but Trump couldn’t bring himself to go through with the dirty deed, which would have entailed the murder of over 150 Iranians. In an act of political calculation, and hopefully humanitarianism, he called off an attack just before it happened. His ostensible reasoning was that killing hundreds of Iranians over the shoot-down of an unmanned aircraft would have been disproportionate. I’m sure he also didn’t want the name of TRUMP scrawled across that particular Pandora’s Box, either.  The fallout of a conflict with Iran would dwarf every previous US-instigated conflict in the region. Not only would the price tag be unimaginable, but it could very well incite world war. Even Trump isn’t that reckless.

The continuous, slimy push for war emanating from every hall of power is shameful, and every American should be ashamed that we have allowed such thugs to gain control of our foreign policy. Our government has become the mother of modern thug states, as well. A war with Iran would serve the interests of Saudi and Israeli thugs, not the interests of the people that will pay for the war with their lives and checkbooks. American citizens, always the human shield of the Political Class, will be forced to pick up the tab. A war with Iran would be paid for by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in taxes, debt, and worthless currency.

The cost of such a war never enters the equation: how are we going to pay for it? The professional liars that receive prime time slots on corporate media and push for war, thugs in every sense of the word, won’t address the question. And the servile propaganda couriers won’t ask.

War is like heroin to the corporate media: ratings and ad revenue skyrocket, and they get to be front and center of an exhilarating conflict. The CIA, Defense Dept., and other miscellaneous military and intelligence pepper these news stations with “ex” officials who push the pro-war line, attempting to mold public opinion into supporting a new war of aggression. War is an addiction of the powerful, whether among the corporate propaganda couriers, the puppet politicians, the weapons industry, the military, or now, Silicon Valley. “War is the health of the State.”