Dennis Prager on conservative values

 

American Greatness published Dennis Prager’s column about conservative values, the first of several, and in this one, Mr Prager zeroes in on the loss of our First Amendment right to free speech:

. . . Liberty is a liberal value as well as a conservative value, but it has never been a left-wing value. Liberty cannot be a left-wing value because the more liberty individuals have, the less power the government has. Conversely, the weaker the state, the weaker the Left.

This especially holds true for the greatest of all liberties—free speech.

Free speech is a fundamental conservative value, and it has been a fundamental liberal value. But it has never been a left-wing value. For that reason, everywhere the Left is dominant—government, media, universities—it stifles dissent. The reason is simple: No left-wing movement can survive an open exchange of ideas. Leftist ideologies are emotion- and power-based, not reason- or morality-based. So, leftists cannot allow honest debate. They do not argue with opponents; they suppress them.

For the first time in American history, freedom of speech is seriously threatened—indeed it has already been seriously curtailed. With the ascent of the Left, the inevitable suppression of free speech is taking place. . . .

Mr Prager’s full column is here.

# # #

Fake News 24/7

At American Thinker, Peggy Ryan opens with a brief account of the alien invasion of New Jersey:

'War of the Words': A Global Media Production

On Sunday, October 30, 1938, thousands of radio listeners heard terrifying news: aliens had invaded New Jersey. 

From a New York Daily News article, October 31, 1938:

A radio dramatization of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" which thousands of people misunderstood as a news broadcast of a current catastrophe in New Jersey created almost unbelievable scenes of terror in New York, New Jersey, the South and as far west as San Francisco between 8 and 9 o'clock last night.  

Ridiculous, you say.  Why would people believe that aliens had invaded?  They believed because it was news.  Orson Welles's adaptation of the War of the Worlds novel used familiar, trusted devices to report the fictional attack — news bulletins, updates from live reporters on the ground.  He used actual government positions like New Jersey governor and secretary of interior and physical locations like Trenton, Mercer, and Princeton.  These positions and locations were all too familiar to those listening to the "news" updates — confirmation that the reports were real. 

Still, does hearing it on the news make it any less impossible?  Apparently, because thousands were convinced right up until they switched channels or heard the retraction.  But what would have happened if War of the Worlds had been on every channel, reported by all news outlets?  What if there'd never been a retraction?  Wouldn't millions have believed the impossible?

These lessons were not lost on power brokers around the world.  In the U.S. today, eight billionaires control our once free press, while their oligarch allies monopolize social media.  Their messages are not only uniform across all channels, but often repeated word for word.  And because it's every mainstream media channel, because nearly every social media site backs it up, fake news is the order of the day — fabricated stories, nonexistent sources, blatant propaganda presented as fact. 

So how could these information power brokers use this imperium?  Could the "news," say, take a story made from whole cloth, total fiction, and make it real, use it to damage and possibly remove a sitting president?  They could, and they did. 

Read the rest here;  Ms. Ryan explains how “They could, and they did” – and “they do” pretty much all the time.  Ms. Ryan seeks a remedy:

It falls to those who seek truth to help those who can't "judge" for themselves.  We must expose media as the enemy, be armed with facts from reliable sources, expose the lies, and reject the illusions.  It falls to us to educate others.

That’s a tall order.  Keep trying. 

# # #

Political Censorship: it's everywhere

 

Here's Kyle Becker at Trending Politics reporting on unconstitutional censorship:

This is Not America:
Political Censorship Campaign Unconstitutionally
Targeted Millions of Americans

The United States government is unconstitutionally targeting millions of Americans for their political speech by directly contracting with private ‘third parties’ that flag their viewpoints for alleged ‘misinformation.’

The federal government has contracted with at least five private companies or public non-profits to ‘flag’ Americans’ views on everything from Covid-19 to the 2020 election.

In an editorial at Just the News, John Solomon and Greg Piper reported on four of these groups, but the report suggests that the radical left’s operation to chill free speech is just the tip of the iceberg.

. . .

“The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika,” the article adds. “It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and State’s Global Engagement Center to file ‘tickets’ requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.”

“Three liberal groups — the Democratic National Committee, Common Cause and the NAACP — were also empowered like the federal agencies to file tickets seeking censorship of content,” the article goes on. “A Homeland-funded collaboration, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, also had access.”

. . .

It should be noted that the U.S. Constitution not only guarantees Americans’ right to free speech, but the right to consume information freely in the marketplace of ideas.

To conclude:

The U.S. government is violating the Constitutional charter that brought it into existence by violating the rights of Americans in states across the country. 

So where are the lawsuits?  Read Mr. Becker’s full report here.

# # #

Cartoon: First Amendment up in smoke

Mike Lester cartoon

 # # #

The endgame is one-party rule

Democrats Are Lying and Everyone Knows It

Well, not everyone.  Here’s part of Stephen Kruiser’s column from yesterday at PJ Media:

. . . Let us begin with a point of clarification. I am well aware that we live in a representative republic and not a democracy, but I’ll be using the latter description because that’s what is being employed in the false narrative I’d like to pick apart.

. . .

The assault on democracy that the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media are carrying on about is very much in progress, but it’s coming from them. They are waging a full-scale ideological war on anyone who doesn’t agree with their increasingly commie policies. Make no mistake about this: their endgame is one-party rule in the United States of America.

. . .

The laundry list of things they lie about grows every day and has done so at a greater pace since Donald Trump won the 2016 election. Russia collusion. J6 was an insurrection. The 2020 presidential election was one of the cleanest ever. Republican efforts to shore up election integrity are racist.

On it goes.

Of course, Democrats’ false narratives don’t become narratives without the corrupt corporate mainstream media aiding and abetting them. 

. . .

Read the full column here.

# # #

Solway: The Threat of the New World Order

 

 David Solway at The Pipeline outlines the New World Order. He begins:

It is disturbing to note that the greater portion of the public do not seem to be aware of the vast ideological movement for social transformation called the Great Reset. Those who are at least partially informed consider it merely another conspiracy theory. Some among the so-called elite—the media, the academy, the political stratum—consider the Great Reset as a rational and benevolent response to the specter of overpopulation and the threat of populist uprisings. Others among the patrician class, doubtless a majority, are engaged in promoting what they know to be a concerted attempt to destabilize and supplant the long-established order of ideally democratic governance that has slowly and incrementally characterized the liberal societies of the West, dating from the Magna Carta (1215) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the approximate present.

We should make no mistake about this. The revolutionary project, whether denominated as the New World Order, the U.N.’s Agenda 2030, or the Davos-centered Great Reset—different terms for essentially the same impetus—under the influential leadership of Klaus Schwab is apocalyptic in its aims. It envisages a world in which the middle-class will have been expunged, the global census markedly winnowed, and a China-like social credit system introduced in which citizens will be under constant digital surveillance determining what they are allowed to possess, rent, use or spend.

Mr. Solway concludes:

The last decade or two has served as a trial run for what is to come. Media censorship and administrative fiat culminating in the gradual suppression of long-standing freedoms and economic expectations have tenderized the public for a grim and reductive future in which they will own nothing and be miserable. The Great Reset is poised to profit from such prefatory conditioning in the laboratory of public affairs and political enactments. There is no getting around the brazen fact that we are now facing arguably the greatest menace ever to gather its forces against the liberal civilization of the West. This is not hyperbole. For the regents of deconstruction, it’s full speed ahead. The Great Reset is approaching steadily and with growing rapidity, unless we are vigilant, muster our resources, and meet the challenge with renewed vigor and conviction. Whether the effort will bear fruit remains to be decided, but there is, really, no alternative.

By 2030, you will own nothing and you will be happy.  Or else.  Read the full column here.

# # #

COVID jab injuries

 

Dr Joseph Mercola reports on the adverse effects of the COVID vaccine at Uncanceled News:

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• “mRNA ‘Vaccine’ Genocide 2021-2022: Testimonies from the Victims and Medical Staff,” tells the stories of people around the world who have been injured by the COVID jab
• Their struggle, their pain, their deaths deserve to be acknowledged for what they are — the result of medical malfeasance, regulatory corruption and societal “mass formation” insanity driven by media fearmongering and outright lies
• A common thread in these stories is the consistent dismissal by the medical community. Even in cases where the doctors do suspect a COVID jab injury, they still have no idea how the symptoms are caused or how to treat them, so they just send the victims home. Successful treatments appear to be extremely rare, which adds insult to injury
• The COVID shot is the most dangerous drug [see note below] in the history of modern medicine, and these dangers were foreseen and predicted by many respected and well-educated doctors and scientists, whose voices were censored
• All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable measure from which we can detect true catastrophic events, and all-cause mortality started spiking AFTER the COVID jabs were rolled out. These increases also correlate to a nation’s COVID jab rate

FTA: “The COVID shot is the most dangerous drug [emphasis added] in the history of modern medicine.”  I would qualify that statement with comparisons to, e.g., AZT, remdesivir, and thalidomide.  Had Dr Mercola claimed the COVID shot was the “most dangerous” vaccine – that’d no doubt be correct.  

Among the respected physicians who have been sounding the alarm about the vaccine risks is Dr Robert Malone, who is credited with inventing the mRNA delivery system for the vaccine.  Having been censored at Twitter and YouTube, he now publishes his blog at Substack here.

Full article by Dr Mercola at Uncanceled News is here.

# # #

Clot Shots & adverse events

 

At the NOQ Report, S.D. Wells brings us up-to-date with adverse events that can follow injection of the “vaccines” ~ a/k/a Clot Shots:

Editor’s Note: Despite the fact that adverse reactions are being more readily reported by a reluctant corporate media, any mentions of them are still getting blocked by Big Tech. We [NOQ and sister sites] have officially dropped down to essentially zero traffic from Google and Facebook, and we wear that predicament like a badge of honor. We will continue to report on the many disturbing cases of jabs-gone-wrong, and while we understand why most other conservative news outlets refuse to do so, that doesn’t make it right. It’s up to you guys to help share this information if you choose to do so because now more than ever, with millions of parents preparing to get their young children jabbed, the facts need to come to light. 

7 Scariest Covid-19 Post-Vaxx “Adverse Events”
That Are Becoming More Common

The CDC and MSM call it “vaccine hesitancy” but it’s more about “vaccine science” that shows the COVID-19 gene-mutation jabs are experimental, dangerous and ineffective. It’s not “hesitancy” if the statistics reveal that getting a clot shot is FAR more dangerous to the majority of the population that actually catching the latest coronavirus. It’s not a conspiracy theory that the clot shots are experimental at best, with “emergency use only” approvals and fraudulent clinical trials that reveal commonplace nightmarish side effects and adverse events.

Just because mainstream (fake news) media doesn’t cover the facts does not mean they are not happening all around us. If a tree falls in the forest, but you don’t hear it hit, that doesn’t mean it never fell. When perfectly healthy athletes, pilots and military members drop dead from blood clots, myocarditis, heart attacks and strokes, just days or weeks after getting injected with gene therapy COVID-19 shots, there is valid reason to be very concerned.

Why give any teenager, tween or child a deadly Wuhan virus clot shot when there’s next-to-zero chance they could die from COVID? . . .

Two-thirds of all Americans have been brainwashed by a fear-based campaign of propaganda to get the COVID jabs.

The days of evidence-based science are dead in America. The days of checks and balances are gone. The regulatory agencies are chock full of Big Pharma gurus who make all the rules and mandates based on zero science. Only fear could make hundreds of millions of Americans get stuck with shots that clog the blood, flood the organs, and cause “sudden adult death syndrome” (SADS).

Only a fear-based campaign for a virus that causes far less than a one percent death rate could convince two-thirds of all Americans to wear a bacteria-breeding mask over their respiratory apparatus for two years straight.

Only a scamdemic could take so much taxpayer money and hand it to the evil scientists, politicians and regulatory goons who funded, designed and propagated it. Let’s face it, there’s NOTHING “safe” or “effective” about the Fauci Flu jabs. Avoid them like the plague.

Top 7 SCARIEST COVID-19 post-vaccine “adverse events” MSM and CDC never mention for fear of “vaccine hesitancy”

#1. Dropping dead suddenly from “unexpected causes” a.k.a. SADS (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome)

#2. Weird, long, rubbery, fibrous blood clots (bio-structures)

#3. Myocarditis, irregular heart beats and heart attacks

#4. Cancer and tumors flare up out of the blue

#5. Catching and/or dying from COVID-19 or its variants

#6. Paralysis of arms, legs or face (Justin Bieber’s “Ramsay Hunt” Syndrome)

#7. Suddenly suffering from GBS (Guillain-Barre Syndrome), AIDS, ADE, or VAED

Source link is here.  What the reporter left out:  the mis-named "vaccines" can compromise both adults' and youngsters' natural immune systems, see e.g. here. 

# # #

Censorship at Fox News

 

Some of the most valuable and reliable sources of news are now found at Substack – where they can’t be censored.  Emerald Robinson/The Right Way is a reporter who digs, and she’s been going after Faux Fox News for some time.  Previously she posted on “What Happened to Hannity?”  Today, she’s unpacking Tucker Carlson’s injunction to censor any mention of Dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules.  That included having True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht on his show – as long as she didn’t mention the name of the documentary.  Here’s some of her commentary at Substack:

This sort of thing would be unthinkable just a few years ago. D’Souza’s tweet virtually guarantees that he will never appear on any Fox News program again. He will be black-listed — a common practice at Fox (just ask Rudy Giuliani and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Peter Navarro). Dinesh knew all of this and did it anyway — and that should tell you something. (He even tagged a Fox producer on Tucker’s team to name and shame him.) Fox has lost its monopoly power on the Right, and it’s no longer immune from criticism by the conservative community.

. . .

The real reason that “2000 Mules” is being ignored by the conservative corporate media and the liberal corporate media is because it’s true. The stolen 2020 election was the largest political interference operation ever conducted in America. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s charity spent more than $400 million to create a private election system in swing states — and he was hardly alone. It took massive coordination from both political parties and the corporate media and federal law enforcement and left-wing NGO’s to thwart the will of the American people in 2020.

The problem for both political parties and the corporate media and federal law enforcement and left-wing NGO’s is that they pulled it off but they got caught doing it. The fraud was much too pervasive and public to be kept secret. That’s why “2000 Mules” is creating such an awkward moment at Fox News. Our corrupt institutions have no idea what to do next. They can't admit to the fraud — but they also can't dismiss the evidence. (They tried for the last 18 months and it didn’t work.) They have to pretend now that nothing is happening and they have to keep pretending until 2024.

. . . 

Read more at her Substack page here. Includes link to video.

# # #

Dr Malone, Vitamin D3, and Preventable Death

Dr Robert W Malone is the scientist who is credited with inventing the mRNA technology, i.e., the delivery system for the COVID “vaccines” by Pfizer, Moderna, et al.  He is hardly an anti-vaxxer, and this blog has linked to his speeches and articles before.  Because he is on record as skeptical of the “vaccines”, especially for children, he’s been censored, kicked off YouTube and Twitter, etc., but his latest posting on Substack reviews the role Vitamin D3 has played in human resistance to viruses.  He begins:

Preventable Deaths and D3:
The Ugly History of Vitamin D3 and Fauci's pro-Vaccine Bias

The inconvenient truth is that even at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a very simple, inexpensive and effective treatment was available that could have saved the majority of lives lost (1-3). All that the WHO and public health bureaucracy had to do was to recommend and support people taking sufficient Vitamin D3. This failure to act traces back to the unscientific bias and pro-vaccine obsession of Dr. Anthony Fauci. And once again the legacy media, while being paid by the US government and the pharmaceutical industry to promote vaccination, acted by censoring, defaming and suppressing the ability of physicians to inform people of scientific truth. The disease you suffered, the loss of life among your family and friends, could have been greatly reduced by simply getting enough Vitamin D3. This is another example of what happens when unelected bureaucrats are allowed to control free speech. Crimes against humanity.

The effectiveness of Vitamin D3 as an immune system-boosting prophylactic treatment for influenza and other respiratory RNA viruses was first discovered in 2006 (4, 5). Despite that fact that this treatment is amazingly effective for preventing death (by strengthening your immune system), it has never been investigated by the NIH, promoted by the CDC or by the US government for the treatment of influenza. One major issue has been that uncontrolled variables of dosing, timing of dosing and disease status have resulted in inconsistent clinical trial results (much as we have seen with the Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine COVID trials). However, when Vitamin D3 is given prophylactically at sufficient doses, there is clear and compelling evidence that Vitamin D blood levels of around 50 ng/ml will substantially reduce symptomatic infection, severe disease and mortality.

Longstanding worldwide public health policy is that Vitamin D should be taken at sufficient levels (typically supplemented in milk products) to prevent the bone disease called rickets. But this is just a minimal level to prevent a very obvious debilitating disease. The recommended Vitamin D levels in our milk are not sufficient for the more subtle immune system-boosting effects of this critical vitamin. Our bodies’ way of normally producing Vitamin D requires a lot of sunlight, but life in the modern world and northern latitudes make this difficult- particular in winter months which is often when the respiratory viruses cause the most disease and death. In a sense, disease and death from Influenza and other respiratory RNA viruses are a lifestyle disease. Just the way things are. Largely avoidable unnecessary death. . . .

Read the rest here.  Is Vitamin D3 one of your daily supplements?

# # #

“Uncovering the Corona Narrative”: the digital-financial complex

Dr Robert Malone is the scientist who is credited with inventing the mRNA technology, i.e., the delivery system for the COVID “vaccines” by Pfizer, Moderna, et al.  He is hardly an anti-vaxxer, and this blog has linked to his speeches and articles before.  Because he is on record as skeptical of the “vaccines”, especially for children, he’s been censored, kicked off YouTube and Twitter, etc., but his latest posting on Substack introduces the transcript of a talk in August 2021 by Ernst Wolff:

Many who have followed this coronavirus “public health crisis” and the non-sensical response provided by most of the western nations (including the USA) have been perplexed by two big questions - how was this done (in such a globally coordinated fashion), and why was it done?

In my case, I have tried to follow the various threads of facts and logic, to confront the perplexingly dysfunctional public policies, and to make sense of what is so deeply illogical. What I have found has been layers of lies, one on top of another, which seem to require an amazingly coordinated and globally comprehensive control and shaping of information in the form of propaganda and censorship on a scale which was previously unimaginable. Total information control, and total unrestricted, all encompassing information warfare. Modern media manipulation of thought and minds without boundaries, and without any ethical constraints.

One constant thread which runs through all of the mismanagement, all of the authoritarian policies, all of the totalitarian logic and messaging, has been the role of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its acolytes. WEF is a key think tank and meeting place for global capitalism management, and arguably qualifies as the leading global Deep State organization. Under the leadership of Professor Klaus Schwab, it has played an increasingly important role in coordinating the globalized hegemony of transnational capital and large corporations over Western democracies during the last three decades. Many of its members actively use Covid-19 as cover to carry out a “Great Reset” as described in Schwab’s writings. This Great Reset involves implementation of digital tracking and control of people, ushering in techno-feudalism, and the WEF objective of a fourth industrial revolution incorporating technologies collectively referred to as “transhumanism.” Western governments and WEF have identified genetic mRNA vaccines as a first step toward an inevitable transhuman society which they seek to guide us towards. The WEF has developed and implemented a training program which has yielded thousands of acolytes who have been placed into positions of power throughout the western world. A small representative sampling of these includes the following drawn from the ranks of the United States government and industry:

And he goes on to enumerate the scope of the power-grab in

• Politics and policy
• Legacy media
• Technology and social media

Dr Malone then segues to Ernst Wolffs' answer to the big questions that have plagued all of us. And Mr Wolff asks the million dollar question about COVID and the “vaccines”:

Can it really be the case, that everything that we’ve experienced was planned?

The rest of the transcript is concerned with Wollf’s interpretation of the facts and policies that he reviewed over many months; he does a convincing job of connecting the dots.  Read the rest here.

I had to read through this analysis in installments;  it’s a lot to absorb.  So I’m leaving this one on the blog over the weekend.  Spoiler: this analysis ends on a very hopeful note. 

# # #

YouTube suspends RSBN ahead of Trump rally

 

More censorship.  Via The Right Scoop:

YouTube has just suspended Right Side Broadcasting Network just a few days before Trump holds a rally in Georgia:

 

[click to embiggen]

RSBN says that their live streaming ability has been taken away for a week because of ‘election misinformation’ or something.

It’s a good thing they are on Rumble because at least there they have the ability to live stream and aren’t completely shut down.

And we’ll have the Trump rally for you here on Saturday night, probably with a RSBN Rumble live stream.

We’ll post the link for the Trump rally on Saturday.  

# # #

Cars, Cash, & Communication

 

JB Shurk at NOQ analyzes how communists are forcing the New World Order:

The Three Cs Preventing Total State Control

If you were a time-traveling supervillain intent on world domination, how might you change the past in order to seize total control of the present?  I’d get rid of the personal automobile, unsupervised cash transactions, and uncontrolled mass communication.  If you take away freedom of movement, freedom of commerce, and freedom of speech, then you can keep people isolated, dependent on government welfare, and ignorant of any ideas that might threaten the power of the State.  Cars, cash, and communication are tools for promoting and protecting freedom, so if your goal is total State control over the individual, the three big Cs must go.

Is it a coincidence, then, that Western governments today seem committed to following that very playbook?  They can’t go back in time and un-invent the automobile, but they can make cars so prohibitively expensive through endless regulation that only the wealthiest among us eventually own them.  They can’t surveil every market transaction, but they can make it increasingly difficult to exchange goods or services without using traceable electronic platforms.

They can’t completely shut down email, social media, or the Internet without shutting down power grids, but they can partner with ideologically-aligned tech monopolists to censor information and viewpoints, limit anonymity, and track users.  Who needs time travel when it is possible to transform freedom-enhancing technologies into systems of State control?

I know we’re all supposed to believe that carbon dioxide plant food is evil, and the only way to “save the planet” is to ban everyone (except the “elites”) from using energy, but it sure is convenient that a century after the automobile revolutionized the world, the “ruling class” wants to de-revolutionize mass mobility.  In the late nineteenth century, most people lived and died in the towns where they were born.  With highway systems and the internal combustion engine, personal freedom jumped by leaps and bounds.

And Mr. Shurk concludes:

Can you remember a time when disagreement was accepted as a vital part of a healthy and free society?  Can you remember a time when speech was not policed and people were not fired for their personal beliefs?  Can you remember a time when self-sufficiency was a virtue and government dependence was something to avoid?  Can you remember a time when freedom was not something “handed out” for good behavior?  If you can, then you know what’s already been lost.  And unless Americans demand control over their own futures once again, you know how much more there is still left to lose.

Full article is here.  Recommended.

# # #

Now it's classical music: Denounce Putin or Be Blacklisted

 

And now compelled speech is canceling classical music.  Heather Mac Donald is a favorite of mine, and even if classical music is not your thing, you’ll probably know that canceling a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture is a stupid way to virtue-signal any solidarity you may have with the Ukraine or opposition to Putin.  Ms. Mac Donald published yesterday at City Journal, and here’s her opener:

Compelled speech is becoming routine in academia. On campuses, faculty candidates for hiring and tenure increasingly must attest to their dedication to diversity to be considered for a job or a promotion. At least one university requires professors to post a “land acknowledgement”—a statement declaring that the space being used was originally the habitation of indigenous people—on their syllabus page.

Now the classical music establishment is adopting that same norm. Russian musicians are being asked to condemn President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to retain jobs and performing engagements in the West. Staying above the fray is not an option, and denouncing the war will not ward off cancellation. Russian musicians must criticize Putin by name or be blacklisted.

Classical music’s recent self-abasement for its “whiteness” laid the groundwork for this presumptive group guilt. Since the George Floyd race riots in May and June 2020, directors of orchestras, opera companies, and conservatories have lambasted their own field for its historical demographics, said to be inextricably linked to racism. Music critics have sneered at Beethoven and other composers for having allegedly leveraged their whiteness to achieve undeserved acclaim. Mea culpas and promises of fealty to Black Lives Matter have become de rigeuer in mission statements and fundraising pitches. Now these coerced confessions are demanded of a subset of musicians whose Russianness makes them as suspect as whiteness does the entire Caucasian population. Even Russian music itself faces a political litmus test.

Ms. Mac Donald goes on to cite chapter-and-verse on the numerous cancellations worldwide of Russian-born musicians, including the cancellation of superstar Anna Netrebko’s upcoming appearances at The Metropolitan Opera -- and even dead composers such as Tchaikovsky.  Madness.  Full article is here.  

# # #

MasterCard and Visa Have Suspended Russia Operations: ominous

 

image credit: blackenterprise.com

Why Americans Shouldn't Be Happy That

MasterCard and Visa Have Suspended Russia Operations

At PJ Media, Robert Spencer concludes:

This action by Visa and MasterCard is also ominous for American conservatives. Allum Bokhari, who covers Big Tech for Breitbart, reported last July that “progressive activists have launched well-funded campaigns aimed at payment processors, and credit card companies, aimed at cutting the political right off from payment and banking services.” Bokhari also noted that I myself was a victim of this in 2018: “Visa and Mastercard cut off payments to David Horowitz’s Freedom Center. Horowitz later had the service restored, but Islam critic Robert Spencer reported that he too was blacklisted by Mastercard, blaming it on pressure from far-left activists.” Indeed: after a Leftist hate group published an “exposé” about funding of “right-wing” groups, MasterCard cut me off, claiming it had done so because my website featured “illegal content.” That is, content that Leftists don’t like.

Whatever you may think of me and of other people that the Leftist establishment has targeted for destruction, the implications of what is being done are clear. America is at a crossroads today. The choice before us is whether we will continue to exist as a free society, or whether we will become a totalitarian state in which holding the proper opinions is an indispensable prerequisite of being able to function as a citizen at all. Note that Visa’s Al Kelly said his company had decided to take the step to suspend services in Russia because of “the unacceptable events that we have witnessed.” What will Americans who dissent from the Leftist agenda do when the credit card giants tell them that such dissent is “unacceptable” as well?

If MasterCard and Visa offer their services only to those with acceptable political opinions, it isn’t just Russia that will ultimately be affected. At risk is the basic and hard-won principle of equality of access to services. When that goes, our other freedoms will swiftly follow — more swiftly than most Americans realize.

Read the rest here.

# # #

Fighting fascism

 

J.B. Shurk at American Thinker offers a glimmer of hope:

Surely the victors over communism, fascism, and Nazism cannot then fall victim to the madness of those same philosophies collapsing their systems from within.  This "Us/Them" self-delusion has kept the citizenry from recognizing tyranny inside its gates.

. . .

The growing tyranny in the West has not happened overnight.  It did not suddenly arrive at our doorsteps with the Chinese Flu.  It has been a nightmare decades in the making.  The difference today is that previously slumbering citizens once sublimely content in the normal humdrum of their lives are waking up to realize that the enemies from our past have returned with a vengeance.  Free speech is treated as dangerous.  Western governments, corporations, and social media platforms engage in rampant censorship.  Race and sexual identity are used as the defining attributes of a person to the exclusion of talent, character, and achievement.  Teachers' unions openly demand the right to indoctrinate children according to the interests of the State.  Parents are threatened for believing that their children belong to them.  The criminal justice system is used as a place to punish political opponents and to protect political friends.  Religious expression is outlawed.  Leftists' "secularized religion" is imposed.  Freedom is disparaged as "right-wing."  Coercion has replaced consent.  Victimhood has replaced virtue.  Conformity has replaced individuality.  "Correct" thinking has replaced freethinking.  "Social justice" has replaced real justice.  And the protection of government has become more important than the protection of human rights.

For the newly awakened, there is a tendency to see all this carnage for the first time with fresh eyes and become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the rot.  The corruption, criminality, and chaos have infiltrated everything once held dear, and the future seems hopelessly lost.  That hopelessness, however, is not based in reality but rather the "Us/Them" self-delusion that tyranny could not happen here.  It's not easy to accept that the great sacrifices of the past made in the struggle for human freedom have once again been squandered by a new generation of despots.  It is a necessary first step, though, before the righteous can throw themselves into the fight and get back to work.  And once people come to terms with the fact that tyranny not only could happen here but that it is happening here, then they will realize that the struggle has only really begun in earnest.

. . .

Now consider all of the slogans we daily encounter from government and corporate mouthpieces alike: Black Lives Matter!; Build Back Better!; Trans Rights Are Human Rights!; The Science Is Settled!; Save the Earth!; Stop Global Warming!; The War on Women Is Real!; We're All in This Together!; Abortion Is Health Care!; My Body, My Choice!  It doesn't matter how vapid, factually incorrect, or contradictory the political slogan.  What matters is that all of us repeat them obediently to prove our allegiance to and faith in the system.  And therein lies the key to our salvation.  

Lots more here.

# # #

Medical censorship

 

JD Rucker at NOQ interviews Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, who knows first-hand that the stats of adverse reactions to the COVID "vaccine" are being suppressed by the medical community:  

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden: After Over a Million Jabbed, Why Is Methodist Hospital Refusing to Release Adverse Reaction Data?

Who ever thought we’d reach a moment in American history when doctors were forced to get permission from government to prescribe safe and effective drugs to their ailing patients? It never crossed my mind until the powers-that-be started playing their hand in 2020, doubling-down in 2021, and advancing medical tyranny beyond lunacy in 2022.

I had an excellent discussion with Dr. Mary Talley Bowden on the topic during the latest episode of The Midnight Sentinel. She’s a wealth of information about the dynamics between hospitals and patients. But she’s one of very few doctors who are speaking out against vaxx-pushing hospitals because she owns her own practice. She doesn’t have a boss and cannot be fired. Her only real concern is losing her license to practice, and there are many people who are trying to make that happen.

Is she delivering bad care to her patients? No. The complaints are coming in from people she’s never met, people who have objections to her not embracing the accepted Covid narrative about treatments and universal vaccinations.

One of her biggest critics is the huge hospital system in Houston, Methodist Hospital. They removed her privileges and have smeared her continuously, ramping up when she made her plight public. They even denied her request for information, which a non-profit organization like Methodist cannot do. Now, she’s suing.

Of particular interest is the data regarding adverse reactions to the Covid shots. Like other hospitals across the country, they are refusing to release data about it. It’s a component of informed consent to have accurate information about the jabs. For Methodist and other hospitals to continue injecting people while withholding extremely important information about adverse reactions is despicable.

. . .

Yup, despicable.  The interview text follows; click here.

# # #

Blockchain Republics: good news?

 

 image credit: takeneo.com

I would not have been able to define the word “blockchain” before reading J B Shurk’s column at American Thinker.  Here’s how he describes it -- and why it makes him optimistic:

. . . blockchain is a decentralized database of transactions, and the rate of its adoption around the world is occurring twice as fast as the internet's during its genesis.  It is transforming the world of finance by introducing the existence of digital cryptocurrencies and other financial instruments that cannot be controlled or manipulated by central banks or government spendthrifts.  It will not stop there.  It represents a revolutionary redesign in the ways information, wealth, and governance function by undercutting centralized authority and empowering everyone else.  It is the ultimate tool for slicing and dicing international authoritarianism into parts too dispersed for search engine and social media censors, corporate news propagandists, central bank thieves, or one-world government oligarchs to control.

If you have wondered why totalitarianism has come back into fashion and why Western leaders have spurned freedom for talk of wobbly notions of "democracy," it is because the decentralizing benefits of blockchain technology have the potential to flip the hierarchy of power on its head.  Imagine a future where banks become unnecessary, central banks become obsolete, trade of goods and services no longer requires third-party lawyers or brokers, and personal wealth is secure from the snooping eyes of State agents.  Imagine if Google's search engine, Twitter's and Facebook's fake "free speech" platforms, and breaking news websites could not be manipulated by corporate intermediaries working to stifle certain points of view and push others.  Imagine if services once traditionally left to the government sphere could be contracted among private towns and citizens without any space for regulators or lawmakers to intervene.  Imagine a world in which free speech and free trade are truly free, private property is secure from government taxation, Election Day votes are all easily verifiable through a public ledger, and people can choose to share information and ideas without the cultural Marxism of political correctness turning rights into liabilities.  Moving away from transactions controlled and monitored by "elites," corporations, and governments and toward blockchain transactions that are "housed" nowhere, cannot be altered, and remain secured from bad actors means a system where censorship, coercion, and government monopoly fade away.  

In other words, blockchain technology is the mother of all nuclear warheads against the Davos crowd's dreams of global empire and domination.  No wonder we've had to go into medical lockdown for two years while the super-secret 1% of the 1% figure out how to "Great Reset" the world before the world figures out how to great reset them.

I remain convinced that we are on the threshold of a renaissance for freedom that cannot be terminated early by the collection of corporate, banking, and government powers working so hard today to maintain total control over their populations.  . . .

Read the full column here.

# # #

VDH: Totalitarian Wokeism

 

Victor Davis Hanson knocks another one out of the park. His “Wokeism is A Cruel and Dangerous Cult” at American Greatness begins:  

Wokeism has been described by its critics as the omnipresent use of race—and to a lesser extent, gender—to replace meritocracy and thus ensure equality of result. What follows from implementing that ideology are reparatory actions to reward those of the present by atoning for the injustices done to others in the past. 

Some see it as an update of 1960s cultural Marxism fads. Others scoff that it is just a return to 1980s-style political correctness. 

Still more see it as the logical successor to 1990s-type race, class, and gender obsessions—albeit with a shriller and more dangerous Jacobin, Soviet, and Maoist twist. Wokeism’s hysteria also invites comparisons to the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism. 

But few have described wokeism as the cruel creed that it is. 

Wokeism’s natural logic is to destroy the lives of people of both genders, of all races, and—if need be—those of every age, all to leverage an otherwise unworkable ideological agenda. It is nihilist and destroys everything it touches. It tears apart foes and friends alike, whether by fueling media-driven hatred of Donald Trump or faux-deification of the disaster that is now Joe Biden. 

One of the take-away quotes: "Equity in our Orwellian world is not equality, but payback." The full article is here. Recommended.

# # #

“Saving Democracy” -- by Murdering Free Speech

 

Earlier this week, the Editorial Board at Issues & Insights published “The Murdering Of Free Speech In America”.  Below is their conclusion:

. . . We believe that private companies have the right to determine who may and may not participate in their forums, and our free press is at liberty to publish – or not publish – whatever it wishes. As others have said, it’s just business. It can also be personal. That’s just the messiness of freedom.

But when social media and the press are censoring at the behest of the government, when they become agents of the state, the threat to the First Amendment is real.

Tyrants have always feared and suppressed speech, and the Democratic Party is lousy with authoritarians who want not to govern but to rule as a single party. We see this in not only their pressure on the private sector to rid them of meddlesome characters who express ideas and make statements they don’t like but in their legislative agenda. They have an insatiable lust for permanent, unfettered control of government at all levels.

That’s the “democracy” the Democrats keep talking about saving in the next election. They crave it so intensely they’re willing to kill freedom of speech in exchange for a throne.

Read the full editorial here.

# # #