REPUBLIC REBORN

Posey questioned Zuckerberg on Wednesday over Facebook’s policy of treating “anti-vaccine” content in a censorious manner, with Zuckerberg responding that he believed scientific “consensus” that vaccines were safe, and that Facebook search results would conceal any group critical of vaccines. Posey then mentioned the inconvenient fact that over $4 billion has been paid out in compensation to those who have been injured or to killed by vaccines. That fact bounced off Zuckerberg, who reiterated his company’s defense of burying any content critical of vaccines. Of course, it is his company, and he has a right to do what he wants with it. But does a company cease to be “private” once it begins contracting with the government, or doing its bidding? The corporate news here in the US begins wailing and wringing hands when the media in foreign lands is bullied, censored, or co-opted, yet when it happens here, no one in power appears to bat an eye.

No private business should be compelled to testify to Congress for lawful activity. The reason Zuckerberg goes along with it? Because he wants something from them. He wants the favoritism that Congress can dole out, he wants the blind eye, the protectionism, the perks of being in their favor. This ceaseless currying of favor from government is deeply unhealthy, and the spectacle of a private businessman prostrating himself before Congress is a pathetic display.

This way of doing business now, blurring the lines between industry and government, is dangerous because it clears a path for large-scale corruption. The difference should be clearly marked. Private business should only have to answer for crimes, not lawful activity. But in the present state of business and government, crimes can be openly committed by the politically favored, while the lawful-but-unfavored competitors are railroaded as a gift to the former.

Zuck should do what he wants with his platform. But he should also be forbidden from crawling, hat in hand, to Congress when his competition puts him out of business.

I don’t know much about this, as it hasn’t been written about much at all, but from what I have been able to learn about it, it sounds fairly alarming. From the its website, the ID2020 Alliance is:

“a public-private partnership maximizing the potential of digital ID to improve lives.”

As many have pointed out, the term “public-private partnership” is a public relations euphemism to describe the age-old phenomenon of powerful corporations using the government as a tool to fleece the public. It’s been known by many names: corporatism, mercantilism, fascism, and others. The result is the same. “Public-private partnership” is a nice way of saying that government is allowing itself to be bought by industry.

Now, what organizations does this “alliance” consist of? Microsoft, The Rockefeller Foundation, GAVI Vaccine Alliance, Accenture, and IDEO, an “international design and consulting firm”.  These players should of course raise eyebrows, as any alliance between them isn’t going to produce anything of value for the public.

These organizations have a habit of hiding behind a philanthropic facade, and in this instance their ostensible goal is to create some type of “secure digital identity”, but what is the real goal here? What it appears to be, on the surface, is to create a system of perfect, absolute surveillance, which the “alliance” will use to their advantage. Browsing around on the website itself, what can only be described as a cartel of powerful organizations is selling this ID as “privacy-protecting”, and it appears that they will soon beta test it on 35,000 residents of Thailand. From the website:

“Through their digital identities, participants will be able to not only access improved healthcare services but also securely store educational and professional credentials.”

So the most important personal information will be stored on these IDs in a database. How anyone would believe that this would protect privacy is beyond me, but these organizations do have a habit of testing out all their technocratic delusions on the vulnerable citizens of the Third World.

GAVI, another public-private alliance, peddles vaccines to the Third World, so this ID will certainly be linked up with the ID-holder’s vaccination history.

This will obviously not end well, particularly for the unwitting test subjects of the Third World. But if it succeeds there, it will then be attempted here. Before it is, though, we’ll be subjected to a propaganda campaign touting the necessity of such an ID, or our REAL ID cards will just be swapped out without our ever knowing it happened.

Matt Taibbi discusses the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of labeling every political opponent a “Russian asset”

Philip Giraldi is rightly disgusted by the endless smears of Tulsi by the warmongering Parasite Class

Jim Bovard wonders why, if members of Congress want to occupy Syria so badly, won’t they vote to declare war?

A short history of the FBI’s persecution of political dissent

Reason’s Jacob Sullum explains why banning “assault weapons” is just another gun-grabbing gimmick

Most people are pro-vaccine by default. We’ve been fed a constant diet of industry-created propaganda our entire lives, dutifully lining up for our shots. It’s not until someone experiences first-hand the harm that a vaccine is capable of that they begin to rid themselves of the notion that vaccines are safe and effective for everyone. It usually comes as a total shock to learn that the federal vaccine injury compensation program has paid out over $4 billion over the past thirty years for vaccine injuries and deaths. It also comes as a shock to learn that vaccine manufacturers enjoy complete legal immunity, meaning that they can’t be sued in the event that someone either suffers an injury or dies from their vaccine.

These are facts that contemptible parasites such as Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier would prefer to remain hidden from as many people as possible. In his televised appearance today, he lamented the rapid spread of these inconvenient facts, which to him appear as “misinformation”. The internet, he believes, requires curation, code for censorship. This is to prevent establishment narratives from falling apart so quickly, as tends to be the case when information is free, easily accessed, and easily spread. Too many people are picking apart the narratives peddled by the Political Class, their schemes derailing before they can get their payoff. I’m sure it’s extremely irritating, that fleecing the public is getting harder now that the public can figure out the scams more quickly.

But I’m not even sure why anyone is taking him seriously, as he has a financial stake in the masses accepting their vaccines in a compliant, unresisting manner. Why not curate him? He goes on to say that “anti-vaxxers” are a “threat to democracy”. Excuse me, but exercising our freedom of speech is only a threat to nothing more than your bottom line. And if your products require censorship and mandates in order to turn a profit, you’re peddling a bad product.

That question always makes me laugh, but it’s been posed to me more than once, and I try to make the person posing the question understand what they’re really saying when they speak about “belief” in a product created by a pharmaceutical corporation. Do I “believe” in a pharmaceutical product in the way a Catholic believes in the immaculate conception, or any member of a religion or cult “believes” in their particular doctrine? It’s dangerous to speak about a pharmaceutical product in terms of religious “belief”, as if vaccines are exempt from scrutiny and can only be discussed in theological terms. The vibe surrounding vaccine policy closely aligns with fundamentalist religion in many ways: a perception that “disbelievers” are damned, the censorship of critics, the inquisition and excommunication of heretics, the belief that society is doomed unless the majority accept vaccine policy into their hearts, et cetera.

We humans are hardwired for religion, and if we aren’t careful we let all sorts of beliefs fill that need. This includes vaccines, apparently. And it’s amazing what people will do when in the grips of religious fanaticism.

I’ve always thought it odd that the policies most harmful to those ostensibly designed to aid are the ones that are most easily cloaked in “progressive” language. The minimum wage is just such a policy: wrapped in the humanitarian language, naively supported by idealists with an honest desire to help the poor, yet when put into action, producing results that are the polar opposite of its stated goals. The minimum wage harms the people living at the margins: the mentally deficient, those with little or no job experience, teenagers and young adults, those with a criminal history, et cetera. In short, every single at-risk individual is harmed by an artificial floor placed on wages. Anyone with an understanding of economics sees this phenomenon clearly: placing a price floor on wages increases the demand for the job, perversely giving employers more power to discriminate as to whom they hire. People who aren’t living at the margin begin to apply for the job, and they’re the ones who get hired.

The minimum wage creates a permanent, poverty-stricken underclass.

The preceding restatement was inspired by Target’s predictable experience with the “Fight For $15” minimum wage push. Workers may have received a nominal raise, but their hours were cut, they lost desperately-needed benefits, and now many are forced to work two or three jobs. It’s a barbaric policy disguised in the language of progressivism.

The blinding courage of Julian Assange is difficult to take stock of, as there is so little of it existing in the world at present. His intransigence in the face of the most powerful governments to have ever pillaged and murdered is awe-inspiring in a way that few other contemporaries are. Broadcasting the crimes of a soulless Political Class that has grown too comfortable in its own murderous, parasitic filth, he has stood athwart of the forces that have pushed endless war, propaganda, total surveillance, and soaked up an ocean of newly printed money. This class of criminals who exist off the backs of every single individual who goes to work at a real job every day, this agglomeration of parasites was wounded by the actions of Assange, and so they effectively marked him for death, but have sought to draw out his death as an example for other would-be truth-tellers.

It truly is a so-motion execution, as was apparent at his court hearing, where Assange struggled to recall his name and age to the judge, who refused his request for a delay to his extradition hearing. His uniquely barbaric treatment apparently features psychological torture, the attempt to irreparably break his mind, so that if he does eventually breathe the free air again, he will never again be the same person. People like Assange are the reason the First Amendment exists, they are the reason we’ve enshrined free speech as an absolute right, because historically it has been the habit of governments to jail or kill their most effective critics.

Despite the West’s best efforts, Assange’s jailing and torture is making a martyr out of him. A martyr for free speech and transparency in the face of rampant censorship and secrecy.

I find it endlessly amusing that when a politician is caught in a lie, it’s usually a whopper. Warren’s fabricated Native American heritage was used by her to secure a spot on the Harvard faculty, and her most recent lie, that she was fired from a teaching position in the 70’s because she was pregnant, should disqualify her as a viable candidate. She’s a wholly unscrupulous opportunist, she has proven that she will say or do anything, even going so far as to pretend to not be white, in order to advance her career or gain power. We must prepare for another four years of Trump. Warren will get steamrolled by him, and she will never recover the humiliation of having lost to him.

Can the Democratic party really find no one better to promote in order to beat Trump? Of course, they have the perfect candidate in the person of Tulsi Gabbard. But they won’t promote her, because she has integrity, and a clear message. Hillary’s demential smear of Tulsi proves Tulsi’s credentials. I’m sure Tulsi would feel that she was doing something wrong if she received praise from such an avatar of evil as Hillary.

The corruption, double-dealing, and unbelievable short-sightedness will, barring a Tulsi nomination, bring down the Democratic Party in flames in 2020, and what a pathetic display it will be.

Preeminent defender of vaccine orthodoxy, Dr. Peter Hotez, recently had the temerity to respond to a Children’s Health Defense tweet, prompting an avalanche of critical comments. The tweet in question:

Not only is the dismissal of vaccine critics as “miscreants” bound to back-fire, so will the blanket denial of any and all vaccine injury. The long thread of comments almost universally condemned Hotez for his cowardly refusal to debate and his exaltation of “Science”, ironically using the term as a crucifix to ward off the mounting criticism of vaccine safety and efficacy.

Why is it so hard for these people to admit that vaccines not only have caused a massive amount of injury and death, but that they aren’t the saviors of civilization that they are touted as? I understand that Hotez’ life’s work is in vaccine technology and innovation, but he comes across as a bad faith actor, incredibly deceitful in discussions concerning vaccine safety. More and more people are calling BS on this kind of blind promotion of vaccine orthodoxy, one that doesn’t allow any criticism at all.