It’s crazy that our government can just openly collaborate with Big Tech to control the spread of information. Twitter was supposed to be a town square where everyone could express their opinions without censure. As someone born in a Communist country where the government does in fact control the entire media apparatus, I hate to see that this is also happening in America. It completely goes against what it means to have a democracy.
We the people should not let the government control how we think via mass media. Governments have long used emergencies as an excuse to impose totalitarian rule. We must not let that happen in America. I’m glad we still have sites like Substack where free speech can thrive, where I can write my political opinions down without fear of being imprisoned for them. Thank God for free speech. Let’s hope the government doesn’t try to take more and more of it away from us.
It isn't just crazy, it's unconstitutional. The government cannot legally infringe on right to free speech. Using a company as its puppet to do so does not change that. The employees at Twitter may be legally protected, but the government employees who issued these demands are absolutely in violation of the Constitution.
It’s totally illegal but the relevant jurisdictions are San Francisco and Washington DC so they can do whatever they want.
You get a jury in San Francisco or Washington DC and every single randomly selected person is going to be a total piece of shit. Obviously it’s the same, if not worse, with the judges.
When reading a jury summons, "Total Piece of Shit" is not listed as a requirement for serving as a juror. It may be a requirement for running for judge, district attorney, supervisor, representative, senator, or governor in California and 49 other states and one district!
I would go further. Both Republicans and Democrats should be put out to pasture with Lenny and the rabbits. Indict both the DNC and GOP - and their leaders and funders - for racketeering and start over from the founders' preamble.
There is actually a relevant comparison to make to the Eugenics of the Holocaust and the current Eugenics of "trans". In both cases the weak/vulnerable (especially children) are picked off and most of society looks the other way as they do not think they will be personally affected. All institutions are captured by an ideology in both cases - tech & government, education and "medicine" & pharma work together on the project.
"Echoes of Eugenics: What the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg Means for Us in the US
On the 75th anniversary of the trial of Nazi doctors at Nuremberg we examine Nazi medicine and gender-affirming care Aug 30"
Corrupt, $billionaire corporate Democrats are using "tranz" ideology to push child mutilation into America's hospitals and medical research facilities:
I wonder how the left wing sycophants like comprof and R T will spin this.
The actions of the Biden and in some part the Trump administration are contrary to this country's principles as laid out in the Constitution, especially the First Amendment.
Censoring the exchange of ideas is what dictatorships do, think Russia and the workers' paradises of China, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela, to name a few.
I am waiting with bated breath to see how the left wingnuts on this BBS spin this. Censorship disgusts me. All the wingnuts will do is adjust their knee pads.
My experience when trying to discuss this with lefties has been that they just repeat their mantra “but one million people have died!” They refuse to listen to anything else.
Censorship disgusts me too, Polecat. But Twitter did not have to comply. No one would have been hauled to court if they refused to censor valid opinions. They had the right to refuse. The fact that they performed the government’s bidding is cowardly yes, but that was also their right.
Lol. Guessing the huge death tolls in all the inner cities we're all republican too. Seems silly, most senior citizens are Rs, think that has any bearing on the finding genius.
I just had the most infuriating argument with my dad about this. He claims this is no big deal because of course the government tries to influence public opinion to achieve its aims. I asked by suppression of speech? And he replied it’s what governments do. I responded that it’s what totalitarian governments do, not what the U.S. government is supposed to do. I reminded him that the foundational documents that created the U.S. government explicitly say that it is NOT allowed to do that. Then, he went on to say who cares about Twitter anyway. I sure hope that’s not a representative opinion of most Americans.
Oh it is. If they are even aware of this story, which from my interactions with casual friends (like my gym peeps) they are willfully ignorant. Bugs the heck out of me. Apathy.
So you're saying the government can't tell you to wear seat belts in a car, or to obey red lights at an intersection? The Supreme Court ruled in 1905, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, that the government can enforce vaccinations.
In Jacobson, the smallpox vaccine had a 100 year history, not an EUA, and the penalty for Jacobson refusing it was a $5 fine (about $170 today) not the loss of his livelihood. Also, previous SCOTUS rulings have allowed for returning escaped slaves to their masters (Dred Scott), corralling (Japanese) American citizens in camps (Korematsu), and forcibly sterilizing low-IQ women (Buck v Bell). Jacobson, Korematsu, and Buck were all used by Hitler's Nazi regime to legitimize their treatment of the Jews. So JFYI, citing Jacobson does not make the case that a coercive government action is justified.
Covid vaccine mandates were highly controversial even among many on the liberal left (as opposed to the illiberal Left) because they forced people to participate in a medical experiment, in total contradiction to the Nuremberg Code, the foundational principles of modern medical ethics. So much for those, I guess.
I’m starting the ‘Rock Bottom’ movement. It’s where we just let Democrats do everything they want and then the devastating consequences will cause them to finally be cleansed from society permanently.
If we keep doing this ‘boiling frog in pot’ thing where Republicans play ineffectual defense then it’s really not clear to the average person who is causing the collapse.
Chris Coons, the allegedly centrist moderate, who is really just a bald communist piece of shit, said that the $1.7 trillion was actually a compromise because he wanted more. I don’t know how much more. He didn’t say. But just give it to them. Let them do it. Give them everything. Collapse the country and make it evident who did it.
There is a communist train of thought taught by a man and wife communist profs at Columbia that teach spend the US into bankruptcy, have a total collapse of the government and out of the ashes, shoulder to shoulder the workers with arise and form a communist paradise, like Cuba or North Korea.
I don't know Kev. Lots of people during the great depression, dark times, became communists and if what you are suggesting happens, the great depression will look like a walk in the park. The far left already controls the mainstream media. How do you think the communist news outlets will spin the collapse?
Hey Kevin when you and your buddies come to San Francisco to cleanse the fags, the Jews, the liberals and the other "literal pieces of shit" as you call us off the face of the earth, this armed and well trained ex-paratrooper will be waiting. Better bring an army.
Possibly the grossest smear I have heard against gay individuals and the Jewish people is your suggestion that they all think the same way and they think like you.
"You get a jury in San Francisco or Washington DC and every single randomly selected person is going to be a total piece of shit."
You said it not me. You said that every single person in San Francisco thinks the same and is a total piece of shit. Of course it is just a coincidence that the subject of your ire are the cities with the largest percentage population of gays and Jews in the United States.
"and sooner rather than later, as escalating energy prices and blackouts are confirming People need to know precisely whose heads need to be on pikes."
Pretty funny that I am the one threatening violence here in your topsy turvy land. Is admiring Pinochet and his propensity to throw political enemies out of helicopters to threatening violence?
Not a bad idea since it's already happening. But please keep the truth coming for us sharp enough to have questioned the narrative and dug deeper. Thank G-d for the honest reporting outlets real America's voice free press war room and now finally twitter
I have had the exact same thought! My fear though is that the rampant double standards and utter lack of holding people from one camp responsible will quell the rational conclusion. The drive to be "right" and the mindset that ANY actions in pursuit of certain agendas are justified is truly frightening.
The US government has never followed the law when it is not convenient to do so. The examples are too long to list but we could start with the Declare War Clause. This is not a country of law, but a country of men (and women). Anyone who believes otherwise is fooling themself.
No. Twitter is just a silly little website video game that doesn’t matter. That’s why they are deploying every resource they have to control it. Because it’s a nothingburger. Make sense?
Lol. That’s all we continue to hear- Twitter isn’t a big deal, not many people use it.. etc... etc... So can anyone on the side of skepticism in Twitter’s reach explain why the government seems to be spending quite a bit of time immediately suppressing the slightest bit of dissent from the approved narratives up to and including monitoring accounts with little to no reach or others that post (clearly) sarcastic tweets.
It's not crazy; it is against everything that our Constitution stands for.
Remember, our Constitution is a document that grants federal government the right to police certain areas of community life. It also clearly and unequivocally restricts government activities to ONLY those powers enumerated in the Constitution.
The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution and adopted as the first formal legislation by Congress, specifically holds that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Case law developed though more than two centuries of legislation frowns on any involvement by any branch of the federal government irregularly influencing speech in the public arena.
What the Twitter Files are showing is the concerted efforts by agents of the federal government, most specifically those equipped with police powers suggesting private action under the color of authority, actions in full and flagrant violation of every tenet of our protections against tyranny.
If those responsible for these attacks on our liberty aren't brought before courts of law, then metaphorically heads will roll at the ballot box in the next election.
We cannot allow our freedoms to be taken by stealth by those in whom we have trusted our governance, This is an issue on which we need to stand strong..
Clapper and Brennan repeatedly lied under oath and instead of prison, they have high paying gigs on MSM and with institutions of higher learning. Until there are serious repercussions for this behavior why would anyone not continue to lie, cheat and deceive.
But because reliable sources are not covering this the Wikipedia article on the Twitter Files--which will be the narrative once all settles down-- are providing a very biased report on their substance. I tried to add this article and was not permitted as it is considered "self-published."
I used to donate to Wikipedia - but I stopped when I started seeing how biased they had become. Pity. I wonder what they are ‘afraid’ of to allow posting of this article to Wiki?
It's crowd sourced so more people that have a bias prevail--or, after reading Twitter files I am not sure I believe this now. The fact that no substack can be cited because they are "self-published means a lot of potential excellent sources are left out.
Most impt. to know is that Wikipedia only allows what they call reliable source for citation.:
I find the greatest champions of constitutionally-protected free speech are people who have come from totalitarian societies and seen what life is like without free speech.
I am baffled at the lack of self-awareness of twenty-something Americans claiming that free speech is overrated. It's not like there aren't plenty of voices like your own that will educate them from first-hand experience.
Some 150 Americans voted for two very corrupt, incompetent men, Biden and Trump, because they think and know most politicians are corrupt and incompetent.
So why is anyone surprised that 150 million Americans think it's okay for Big Corrupt Governments to corrupt a tiny social media platform or two?
It's not simply the mass media - they are coming downwind from the Ivy League schools.
The thought control is happening there, where you will not be allowed into the upper class network if you are not compliant. Once they graduate, they get into power and live out the commands of their leaders.
Openly conspire? If not for Musk only suspicion would be possible. Just as we suspect but don't know what transpired with the other social media platforms. What is clear, our government bureaucrats, akin to parents of "otherly abled" children, feel righteous in their determinationto limit what we know and believe.
I’m 100% against what Twitter did, but free speech is a bit tricky these days. I mean, do you allow hate speech, child porn, etc? Who decides what we should hear and what we should not, and what that line is. Or do you just allow everything?
Hate speech isn't a thing, which the SCOTUS has repeatedly ruled on, it's just a made up concept that the Left utilizes to shut down debate for illogical positions it supports. Not sure child porn has ever been considered a form of speech, and I've never heard of free speech being used to defend the promulgation of it.
Free Speech is the enemy of the Left, which is why the permanent government and major media doesn't support it.
Except child porn is ILLEGAL. If it’s illegal in the real world - guess what? - it’s illegal on the internet. Everything that is actually illegal isn’t “free speech.” So there goes THAT argument. I think you counter hate speech with MORE a speech - you don’t censor it. You call it out, use it as a lesson.
Conflating child porn with hate speech is ridiculous. Hate speech is a made up concept. Child porn is an abomination. It should carry the death penalty.
Thank you for clarifying I honestly wasn’t trying to make a point, but was more curious.
Countering hate speech with more free speech makes sense.
I have a simple solution…ensure that everyone has to post their name, face, and home address when posting. My guess is a lot of this nonsense ends overnight.
I don't agree with posting home address! But I do think that the real identity of people who post on the internet needs to be proven before they are allowed to post anywhere online. No hiding illegal behavior with anonymity.
The law of unintended consequences. So much for your “simple solution.”🤣 NOOOOO. Insisting that people put themselves at risk in order to promote their ideas is INSANE and would quite literally promote a CHILLING of free speech 🤦🏻♀️
Musk's people seem to have managed to remove most of the child porn accounts within a week. The thousands of now-fired Twitter employees who ran the system before then could not be bothered to remove those accounts. That says some very disturbing things about the people who used to be in charge at Twitter.
There is plenty of child porn on Twitter. As long as the children are being groomed by a transgender person, or the kids themselves are trans-identifying, it's all good.
What exactly IS "hate speech"? Child porn is illegal. Who decides what we should hear and what we should not? You, the free human individual decide FOR YOURSELF (and for your minor children). You DON'T decide for me, or your adult friends and family, your neighbors, etc.
Your constant comparison of China to the US is getting old. There's a difference between not being able to speak and saying anything you want. Speech, especially when it comes from people with influence, has consequences.
I’m a free speech absolutist. I will gladly stand up for the speech of people I disagree with- Nazis, Communists, white supremacists, black supremacists, etc. Because by classifying any speech as hate speech, that opens the door to other people doing it to your speech too.
I miss when the ACLU was like that. Now it’s turned into another arm of the Democratic apparatus. I don’t subscribe to Foucauldian views about power, which is perhaps why we disagree.
Agreed! I miss Ira Glasser. The Canadian Civil Liverties Union is still doing some good work, which is good, because they really need it there, with the authoritarians that run their government.
The problem with absolutism is the tendency to be closed to new ideas. I appreciate your passion to allow for any kind of speech. I agree it's a slippery slope for anyone to police speech without some inherent bias. Usually i have some idea of a solution but this is a tricky one because many people are being irresponsible with their influence online. We know how Hitler used his speech to influence hate. It's easy to have ideological hubris until you're on the receiving end of a consequence.
Hitler and his thugs threatened anyone who spoke up against them. They won an election by a very small margin, and proceeded to completely shut down any dissent, sowing their tale that all problems were the fault of the Jews who succeeded by plotting against the poor Aryans for centuries. If any of this sounds familiar, maybe it should. It’s a complete revision of history to claim that shutting down speech would have prevented the rise of the Nazis.
Hitler and his thugs did not rise to prominence overnight. They started with falsehoods, misinformation and hate speech to gain impressionable followers too weak to think for themselves or ones that were evil as well.
The “speech has consequences” argument is getting old. Especially when offered by those who have set themselves up as the moral elites who should be the ones to determine the consequences.
Twitter may have been under intense pressure by both Administrations, the CDC and the WHO - but did they have to set up the apparatus to moderate contrarian but still valid points of view?
No. They could have denied requests to censor debate. The fact that they stifled real debate is onerous but well within their right as a company.
I think the real issue here, hiding in plain site, is the monopoly Twitter had as being the main platform for public debate - so important that people thought it truly was a public square owned by all.
But it is merely a corporation attempting to make money. We should never have thought it was ‘our’ bullhorn to use. It never was.
Respectfully, I think the "real" issue is that multiple federal agencies actively and intentionally lie to us to push destructive and stupid policies using whatever vehicle of public propaganda that will bend the knee to serve their power and privilege.
Federal agencies have been lying to us for multiple decades. Nothing new there. As for your statement that they use platforms which will bend the knee to accommodate them I heartily agree.
Hence my point of Twitter being the monopoly platform. It was easy to target and it had no competition of comparable size.
If there is only one TV station how easy is that to control and coerce? But a multi thousand channel universe?
Much more difficult. Same here.
Had there been a few other Twitter size platforms out there this story might have played out differently.
And the union of state power, corporate power, the healthcare system, the education system, the entertainment industry, religious institutions and the public press, is called "fascist totalitarianism."
This is why Democrats project their fascism onto Trump. It's why they encourage and spread Christophobia, because there are still holdouts within religious institutions that have not yet bent the knee to DEI.
DEI is fascism. And remember, Obama promised a revolution at the same time that BLM was founded as a communist revolutionary movement.
those are all features of high-social-trust, "classically liberal", "capitalist" market societies.
"capitalism" co-emerged with high-social-trust institutions, such as Constitutional order.
what you and a lot of other people are incorrectly calling "fascism" is actually neo-communism, specifically postmodern neo-marxism (see James Lindsay for elaboration).
actual historical "fascism" was nationalist and a reaction to the horrors of Soviet-internationalist communism (Stalin).
the "woke" left is an internationalist veneer on globalist corporate-states, neo-communism.
Those have only been sold as such, in reality, they are the opposite. Obama has been overtly undermining social trust, the intelligence agencies have been undermining everything classically liberal, and the "capitalist market" is being undermined by fiat currency.
Anyone honestly believe that if the feds ever get control of healthcare in the US, your position in line for medical procedures will directly mirror your adherence to the state?
Some have described the NAZI relationship with business as controlled capitalism a melding of government and business. There is a debate among scholars on this.
historically, fascism was an ILLIBERAL, revolutionary, nationalist movement, usually with ultra conservative religious elements.
the current, dominant form of "leftism" is postmodern, neo-marxist, globalist, anti-nationalist, anti-populist that either ignores or explicitly rejects traditional religion, and substitutes "woke" faux religion (upheld by the PMC, New Clerisy) that advances the interests of billionaire, media tech oligarchs.
... a passage from the late Christopher Lasch’s book The Revolt of the Elites ... is worth repeating here:
The thinking classes are fatally removed from the physical side of life… Their only relation to productive labor is that of consumers. They have no experience of making anything substantial or enduring. They live in a world of abstractions and images, a simulated world that consists of computerized models of reality – “hyperreality,” as it’s been called – as distinguished from the palatable, immediate, physical reality inhabited by ordinary men and women. Their
[->] belief in “social construction of reality”
[->] – the central dogma of postmodernist thought
– reflects the experience of living in an artificial environment from which everything that resists human control (unavoidably, everything familiar and reassuring as well) has been rigorously excluded. Control has become their obsession. In their drive to insulate themselves against risk and contingency – against the unpredictable hazards that afflict human life – the thinking classes have seceded not just from the common world around them but from reality itself.
The general terms are totalitarianism/authoritarianism. Both "historical fascism" and communism are totalitarian.
Historical fascism was a reaction to the horrors of Soviet communism (Stalin).
Communism and neo-communism (and neo-marxism) require some kind of leadership cult or in the case of "woke" Orwellianism, a more elaborate faux religion, which is typically a reworking of the basic elements of Christianity: some object or idea that is seen as "evil" and "sinful". "Wokeness" holds to the idea that "whiteness" and "patriarchy" and tranzphobia/homophobia are "evil".
(Side note: the "alt-right", NRx and similar populist-right movements in the USA are largely rooted in neo-confederate, working class Appalachian culture, not "fascism" or "white nationalism".)
"Democracy" has historically always involved the co-emergence of private property, individual achievement (agentic values), and high-social-trust in social institutions such as Constitutional order, and nuclear family structure (see Henrich at Harcard, on the W.E.I.R.D. model). Older social systems had other forms of social order, such as mythic religion, clannish family structures (including dynasties) and medieval european Fealty Oaths.
Over 1,000 years ago the NW european gene pool began to select for "classically liberal" personality traits because of a historical "accident": the Church banned cousin marriage, which created more genetic variability, which led to Manorialism and the nuclear family. During the "black death" plagues, peasants in clannish, rural social structures died at much higher rates than "liberal" urban commoners (church and court scribes, shopkeepers, river and sea traders, merchants, etc.)
"Woke" and liberal-progressive-leftist totalitarians are far more neo-communist than they are (historically) "fascist".
Historical fascism was nationalist-revolutionary.
Communism is internationalist-revolutionary.
Both are/were revolutionary, and ANTI-LIBERAL.
"Woke" neo-communism (neo-marxism) is ILLIBERAL/INTOLERANT.
Radical/extremist movements, including leftism, tend to be magnets that attract mentally dysfunctional people.
... fascism as an effective movement was born of fear.
Each stage in the rise of European fascism can be related to a moment of middle-class panic caused either by economic crisis or by its consequences, the threat of socialist revolution.
1. The success of the socialists in the Italian elections of 1919 made Italian fascism a political force.
2. Hitler's Munich Putsch in 1923 came in the year of the great inflation when the communists figured on seizing power in Berlin.
3. Hitler's rise to power in the state followed the great depression of 1929 to 1932.
4. The Spanish Falange was a response to Spanish anarchism. Franco's coup was the response to the electoral victory of the Popular Front.
European fascism, then, was a political response of the European bourgeoisie to the economic recession after 1918, or more directly tot he political fear caused by that recession. So, above all, it was anti-communist. This anti-communism was one oft he few things that made it international. Other than that and its social base, it was heterogeneous and varied widely from country to country. There were two basic reasons for this heterogeneity. One is historical; the other is structural.
Historically fascism was essentially nationalist. Structurally it was always something of a coalition. Italian fascism and German fascism were necessarily more distinct than Italian communism and German communism would be. Behind the vague term fscism there lie in fact two distinct social and political systems. These are both ideologically based, authoritarian, and anti-parliamentary liberalism. But they are different and the confusion between these essentially different systrems is an essential factor in the history of fascism. These two systems can be described as clerical conservatism and dynamic fascism. Every fascist movement was compounded of these two elements in varying proportions and the variety of mixtures relates in some degree to the class structure of the society involved.
Classical communism was and is classical fascism. Woodrow Willson, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Putin, etc. are all classical totalitarians and fascists.
Soviets flamed anyone who opposed them as "fascists", but they were and are the most fascist totalitarians of them all. Putin still is showing his communist and fascist real Putin.
Yes, "fascists" like Putin, Stalin, Mao and Woodrow Wilson used government power to silence political opponents and critics. All but Wilson kill and killed political opponents. See Russia's fascist invasion of Ukraine.
Russian communists, the pure fascists, took word fascist and used it against Hitler.
Hitler, like Mussolini, one of the original fascist, was a socialist, just like the Russian communists.
Totalitarians is a politically correct word that comments section moderators prefer to fascists, which is not politically correct, but it is the word that describes Mussolini socialists, communists and Nazis as well as a lot of American politicians, left and right, who demonize political opponents in an effort to silence them.
Actually, I've spend decades studying history, and I haven't been brainwashed by leftists who think everyone else is a fascists. They don't even get that the worst American racists have been Democrats. Trump is a Democrat. :)
Again, you are grossly incompetent, extraordinarily stupid, and you are incapable of anything beyond ridiculous, performative word games.
"socialism" (communism) was based on revolutionary, international class struggle and atheism
"fascism" was also revolutionary, but a nationalist reaction against the threat of communism, aligned variously with ultra conservative religious conservatism (Franco, latifundismo, etc.) and/or personality cults
A description of historical fascism by an actual (German) historian:
My favorite Democrat Science Argument™️ in favor of the Biden Injection™️ was the one about how VAERS is unreliable so a spike in adverse events doesn’t really mean anything.
It’s hilarious because that isn’t an argument that the COVID vaccine is safe. It’s actually an argument that we don’t really know if *any* vaccines are safe, because that’s how we monitor their safety. So if VAERS doesn’t work then it’s not great.
Sometimes adverse event data doesn't give an accurate picture of drug safety because they have to report every event, whether it's minor or only happened to one person. That said, in drug trials, if they see a huge spike in serious adverse events, they usually stop the trial. They don't turn around and mandate the offending drug. This is what happens when there's too much cross pollination between government and big pharma.
Thank you BikerChick. I watch all two hours of this documentary and all it did was piss me off. What happened to the people harmed by the vaccine is criminal.
I personally know a 21 year old man who contracted transverse myelitis 2 weeks after his second shot. They just write it off as coincidence every.damn.time.
Zero scientific or evidence-based information on VAERS. It is simply a system that anyone can report on and scientist will then go through it and glean what they seem is appropriate to follow up on, based on something like, I don’t know, medical school. 
No, it is a well developed idea in evolutionary psychology, MEMETIC REPLICATION, that you are too ignorant and uninformed to be aware of.
You are like a dog that barks stupidly at anything it isn't used to seeing.
That used to be called NARROW MINDEDNESS.
Dullards like you are narrow minded, and expect people to defer to your mindless blather and groupthink even when you clearly never learned anyone's actual respect for rational, systematic, objective thinking.
Why have you not addressed the 800 lb gorilla? Many physicians who pointed out the value of repurposed drugs; hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoximine, vitamins c and d, povidone, p were suspended from Twitter and ridiculed and lost licenses thanks to Twitter's draconian policies. Do you need a list of Dr's? I understand you have an Atlantic magazine rep to uphold but don't bother bringing this half hearted weak sauce to the discussion if you think glossing over the big issue works w this crowd.
It gets worse if you’re a physician here in CA where Newsom has now passed legislation where medical professionals can lose their license if they spread “misinformation “. However, no one is clear what is meant by “misinformation” (although I think we all know that anything against Newsom’s agenda, whatever that is, will be labeled as “misinformation “).
So now you have a bunch of doctors scared to death of saying the wrong thing, which ultimately will result in a loss of research, critical thought, and eventually the death of science.
The solution, easier said than done, is catch the next Greyhound out of Dodge. People are leaving, that shit hole and I say that literally, and moving to other states that have real people making policy, not like those nut cases in California. I need to amend that. Not just California but the entire west coast.
Aren't you the unhappy, angry one? BTW, I am a conservative and I don't even know what a truther is much less be one. So stop being a one topic rant. You sound just like comprof and R T. All of their rants are "You must have voted for the Orange Man." like that answers all topics. I find it not only stupid but insulting. So stop being stupid and join the conversation. Otherwise, you just sound, well .... stupid.
you are grossly incompetent, which is no surprise.
I'm going to guess that you have little or no idea what Bari Weiss is writing about, you just subscribed to make silly noises in the comments and have kindergarten temper tantrums.
At this point, you are the troll, destroying conversation on Substack at each and every forum you join. So, as you are the common factor of this, please stop.
One of the reasons the left disparaged hydroxychloroquine, a drug that has been in use safely for about 40 or 50 years, was that it had bad side effects. All drugs have bad side effects. Aspirin has bad side effects as does ibuprofen. One of the side effects is they may cause death but that doesn't stop tens of millions of people from taking aspirin and ibuprofen every day.
What the Biden admin and his minions did was criminal.
Incidentally, I have given more doses of HCQ than I can count and have never seen torsade once. (Yes it can happen -- so can being struck by lightening.) Even worse, finding ANY bad reaction to ivermectin requires an electron microscope to search to find one -- it may be the safest effective drug ever. Both of those are likely 1000x safer than the spikeshots.
This entire debacle has been exactly that -- the question is, what is anyone, ever, going to do about it?
Given the BILLIONS of doses of Ivermectin administered over the years, a pretty good argument can be made from the existing data that it is, indeed, the safest drug of all time. That is one of the reasons it won a Nobel Prize.
Dr. I think that is the sub-question, albeit an important one. For me, the question is why this campaign of lies was fomented and who was behind it. The old cui bono schtick. And it seemed to start with the dwarfish buffoon to whom the media turned starting the lies by claiming that "the Choineeze are beying trans-parent." A liar from the start and self-interested. But deeper forces were clearly behind this campaign of deception about the pandemic.
Yeah, while I don’t see biting so hard because this article (about suppression of free speech by actual experts by computer children) as “glossing over” the very real topic of the suppression that was also being done against Dr.’s who were desperately trying reasonable measures such as “Off Label” drug use. The Off Label argument is totally valid and especially important considering it was at the very front of the pandemic, during classic “fog of war” conditions. But I don’t react as if the article is junk just because it doesn’t put THIS issue on the top of a big stack of issues.
Fauci stood there and shot down anything that differed from his agenda as invalid because it didn’t have “triple blind studies” to prove it. He beat thousands of Drs into Pavlovian obedience, even though HE had nothing of value to handle the old people dying right then, in real time.
Heck, I watched Trump (who could finance a new skyscraper in an hour but couldn’t jump a dead battery on a car - he’s just not technical) - Trump simply tried to say “well what about this ivermectin stuff, it’s been used safely for 50 years”. He was excoriated by idiots who had no answers of their own, and in the media domain that can barely spell their own names let alone manage a new pandemic.
At the front end of a crisis with no known cure or preventions, we should WANT the diverse attempts -Gottlieb’s (?) “I go to war with the weapons I have” should be a lesson coming out of this pandemic.
Here is the part that I don’t get...hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoximine, et.al., are drugs to treat people AFTER they have gotten Covid. Why wouldn’t people, especially the vulnerable (i.e., elderly, obese, and those with underlying conditions) just get the vaccine to prevent serious illness in the first place??? The unvaccinated were overwhelmingly those who were hospitalized and dying from Covid. The adverse effects from the vaccine, after hundreds of millions of doses given, has been shown to be negligible at most.
That’s a false statement about making one more likely to die. They do not. It’s true that they do not necessarily provide protection in spreading, but they overwhelmingly protect people from serious disease and death. And if you have any peer reviewed studies that indicate otherwise, please post. Note: that does not include data from quacks like Steve Kirsch who makes up his own BS claims.
blacks, especially non-college-educated/poor blacks, have deep memories of the Tuskegee experiments (abuses of power and unethical/illegal medical experiments).
as of July 11, 2022, 87% of Asian, 67% of Hispanic, and 64%of White people had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, higher than the rate for Black people (59%).
There is a spectrum of quasi-religious beliefs that map into various kinds of personalities and subcultures with reference to the social control narrative of the political and media elites and the medical and science establishment.
It's complicated.
Lots of social critics and theorists came up with different thoughts as the COVID thing developed. I followed Zubin Damania (ZDoggMD) and to some extent Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, and watched numerous social media flame wars between extremists on both sides and various positions in between.
The debates and flame wars within the scientific and medical community exposed both a set of people promoting "bad science" on the conspiracy side as well as corruption on the corporate side of the medical "establishment".
The number of bizarre contradictions that were woven into the emotional narratives that people grabbed into was astonishing, from people fetishizing the medical establishment and demanding conformity to corrupt state authorities and corporations on one side to bizarre, paranoid conspiracy theories driven by massive, corrupt marketing networks on the other.
There are plenty of arguments that can made for either side, but few that even begin to attempt to holistically and systematically examine all of the known facts and evidence. Most people will pick and chose the least uncomfortable narrative for themselves.
To deny that extremists in the "Q Anon" and "anti-vaxxer" cult are mentally dysfunctional or that there are significantly corrupt and extremist elements in the corporate medical establishment exist is not realistic.
The system worked for some people and failed for a lot more.
One consistent feature of the crisis is that lots of peoples' "sense making systems" are deeply broken, and there aren't many ways to easily fix them.
Since nature abhors a vacuum, it got filled with a lot of nonsense and fake narratives.
Another strange phenomenon is that even though Trump should get a lot of credit for Operation Warp Speed, the unvaccinated are 3x more likely to lean Republican.
Are you the designated DNC commenter of the day? Because if so, the should demand a refund. From the very beginning of the pandemic, the complicity and duplicity of Red China was covered up by the leftist media. Why? The identify of the most vulnerable was hidden and the relative invulnerability of the young and healthy was minimized. Why? Even as vaccine efficacy was failing, the mandates to take them became more shrill. Why. And when brilliant doctors such as Makary, Risch, Bhattacharya, McCullough - all from prestigious institutions tried to speak the truth, the propaganda machine went into overdrive. Why?
Why don't you stop being a shill and open your eyes to real science?
Bruce, don't answer this guy. I know this will sound crazy but he's worse than compro and R T combined. The way he rants, he must have a screw loose. Don't encourage him. Stop answering his wild, vile insults. He's not here to exchange ideas. He's here to insult and stir the pot. the guy's an angry, unhappy nut.
Gross. We all suffered from this and we haven't recovered yet, maybe never will. It's much worse than COVID itself. No more "trusting the experts" for us, and this is an immesurable loss.
There's a saying that "trust is gained in drips but lost in buckets." Dr. Fauci CHOSE to blow the entire reputation of the CDC on white lies and manipulations ... during a pandemic. The CDC will probably never regain public trust in our lifetimes. And they deserve that skeptical treatment, by the way. They 110% earned the bed they are going to lie in. It is just a shame that the human cost will be far beyond the realm of COVID.
You are so correct. Once the rose colored glasses came off-it is permanent. I will never trust AMA or government again-on anything. It is all about greed power and control of the masses.
Even at the time I was calling the COVID policies one of the greatest human rights abuses in all history, starting when they doomed tens of millions to die by saying "don't shut down your borders until after you get an endemic infection because it's racist to prevent disease".
Your narrative is incoherent. The article cites a number of heterodox experts that were attacked and censored by a dysfunctional and corrupt media, political and medical establishment.
The solution is for people to learn how think better and demand reforms of corrupt institutions.
As a paid George Soros troll, don’t you feel the obligation to at least use different words occasionally? Or do you think that if you type “infantile drivel” 471 times then people will still think you’re a normal account?
more mental sewage from the conspiratard troll farm
as a delusional, insane conspriatard, don't you feel the obligation to stop getting drunk all day and posting intellectual flautulence and psychotic delusions to Bari Weiss' comments section?
do you think that if you post billions of smug, arrogant, psychotic troll scripts from the Alex Jones troll farm, that people will still think you're a normal account?
No, that is the whole point of me exposing toxic assholes like you, to get people to complain to Bari Weiss about her lack of responsibility in curating her comments section so that psychotic trolls like go away.
And: to get her to pressure substack to implement a block function so that no one has to even see your psychotic lies and trolling.
If you think making a fool of yourself is "exposing toxic assholes" then knock yourself out. It's actually quite amusing to see you throw yourself around like a demonic toddler. Or a mental patient endlessly repeating the same disjointed phrases.
While the serious journalists investigating this stuff deserve our gratitude, I surely can't be the only one who saw this power game for what it was early on. It seemed to me obvious. The government wanted its way and Twitter, et al let them have it. Sad to say, perhaps, but to me it's already old news. The bigger story is the covert corruption of government by unelected bureaucrats. Until that is given full airing, we're just playing the same old parlor game.
The problem goes very far back. Government and power elites in general have been manipulating public opinion for a long time.
As far as social media goes, some tech historians have speculated that it (and the internet in general) was invented primarily as a mechanism to spy on american citizens.
I have worked closely with the feds for almost 25 yrs. Mostly I have worked in DoD, but some time at the FBI and with other IC agencies. Worked at the Federal Reserve, the FCC, the FDIC and Treasury. Spent a short time at HHS, CDC and DHS.
I'm also a student of history and I have read a lot of the history of our government, particularly since WWII.
I also live and work in the DC area.
I'm telling you that you have to be willfully ignorant to not understand the danger that a federal bureaucracy poses to civil liberties even when the intentions are basically good. Incompetence and ignorance can permeate the machine. Misaligned incentives and political pressures just add to the problem. Throw in politics in the form of congressional pressure, directly or from staff or political appointees, which itself is often derived from influential donors and you start to see how even the best intentions can become corrupted. Now toss in the fact that most of the people we are talking about live in a wealthy, powerful bubble, that they are to a large degree arrogant as to their own intelligence, and you see how things like this can happen. (Never forget that 3 of the countries 5 wealthiest counties surround DC)
Well, I will say that I have known a lot of good and well intentioned bureaucrats. Known a lot of very smart ones too.
BUT....I have also known a lot of corrupt ones and a lot of idiots as well.
That said, the system these people work in is designed to break even the best of them. And, I would point out, that for all of these people, it is a JOB. Like any job, they are incentivized to do certain things based on what they are measured on and who is doing the measuring. If the FBI agents in the field are being measured and their performance evaluated based on what is appearing on Twitter, they are going to act accordingly. Same for places like the CDC. If they are being pressured by congress critters to study obesity instead of viruses, they are gonna study obesity. If they are being pressured through budget threats or investigative threats to say that a vaccine is a panacea, they will find a way to get there and make the bosses happy. Never mind that often they are put in a position to do something they know is stupid but because some congress critter got some law or rule pushed through in a bill they have to do it or risk losing their jobs and pensions or...in some cases being charged with breaking the law.
I can think of one perfect example. The national cancer registry. CDC runs one that it provides to the states. (Not gonna get into the details, but let's just say it is a cluster fuck) BUT......The national cancer institute runs one too. Both cost millions to build and maintain. Both are mandated by congress. Both track essentially the same information, with one or two slight differences. Now, the CIO's in both those places know this is a stupid waste of money but both are stuck on congressional mandates they cannot wiggle out of. Now, WHY congress has done this is anybodies guess. Lobbying by the vendors? Pure ignorance? Who knows?
My son wants to go to work with CBP to fight the cartels.
I’m begging him to stay away from any federal position because he’s a principled young man who will not bow and do what he knows to be wrong. It’s bound to end in disaster.
That said, I’m sure there are decent people in the alphabet agencies. I’ve never met one but my previous statement was overly broad at an individual level.
At the organizational level I absolutely believe the federal executive branch is hands down the greatest threat to every American whether they acknowledge it or not.
That is a good question. But I would point out that for many, if not most, of these people, having a conscience can cost them their careers and if an agency is vindictive enough, it can bankrupt or put them in jail.
Blowing the whistle or being outspoken in a system that does not tolerate it and which also has nearly unlimited resources to drag you into court for a civil suit or which can have you charged with some crime just to harass you and make an example of you, is a huge huge personal risk for some person that just wanted a job fixing software or analyzing data or testing things in a lab.
I can imagine some poor schmuck at CDC blowing the whistle on something like the Moderna Covid Vaccine and presents government data to prove their point. First they will get fired. Then the government will turn to the media to discredit them and claim the data was only preliminary or out of context. Then the Moderna folks will get on them and dig into their personal lives looking to discredit them. Then, the lawyers for the agency will suit them for violating an NDA or terms of employment. Then the DoJ will get involved claiming they revealed confidential government information. It just goes on from there. Some slob with 2 kids in college, a mortgage and two car payments is risking a LOT. Even IF they avoid jail, they will be bankrupted by the lawyers, their reputation destroyed and their employment prospects destroyed. The system does not tolerate dissent regardless of which party is in charge.
Yes, this is fair. A cost-benefit analysis is warranted. No one wants to ruin their lives for nothing. But no one wants to be like those people in Nazi Germany who kept their heads down when the trains went by, either. We should all be grateful for the dissenting doctors who spoke out about this early, Malone, Battacharya, et al. We should be grateful for people of conscience willing to do what is right even at great cost to themselves.
Yes. It’s easy to see what the bureaucrats mess up. Remember how CDC couldn’t produce a test kit for COVID ? !
I watched nearly every press briefing at the beginning and watched Trump trying to run cover for them (his “own” CDC as it was). S. Korea was well into testing when CDC finally got over their overly complex fetish of a test and produced one - but when they shipped it the kits were contaminated and local labs were finding that pure water was getting positive results for COVID. Several Universities and local labs had viable tests they had developed but weren’t allowed to use! Pure bureaucratic incompetence and indignance.
The ideologues and Grievance Studies major moonlighting as Twitter employees led the charge in shutting down debate, inquiry, and skepticism — all integral to real science — and instead enforced a culture of counterproductive moralism, in this case unilaterally deciding to override dissenting experts in an area of core competence during the middle of a pandemic.
Great reporting, thank you for this and for all your work against lockdown. While undeniably true that it behaved terribly, even if Twitter had allowed dissenting voices, I don’t know what difference it would have made when literally every “mainstream” medical authority was all in on Covid madness. The American academy of pediatrics literally lied about basic info on child development and then blatantly scrubbed evidence from their own website! You wrote a great piece about the AAP I linked at the time that showed the totalitarian measures they were taking against their own members:
Even with Twitter not censoring, the corrupt medical establishment would have gone into overdrive to strip doctors of careers, and to plant fake stories in the news. Freeing Twitter isn’t enough, AAP delenda est!
Sure Twitter acted badly and peremptorily but they can't steal our liberty. Our all powerful government, however, can and they did. So my real problem is with the Biden cabal, their crooked FBI Stasi pukes, their media flacks and legions of wannabe docs and Karens hectoring people and whining and scolding that "Jesus would have mandated the vaccine."
As Dr. Kulldorff sagely noted, it was known early on that the virus was a disease of the elderly and infirm and there was no need to imprison the young and the healthy. Even less need to vaccinate them with an experimental vaccine. Question is what game were the Democrats playing to suppress the truth, mandate the vaccine and ruin the economy? More important, why? This is a good start but we need to smash open this web of lies and bring the malefactors to justice.
This is a story of complete governmental overreach that violated citizens' rights to free speech. Yes, Twitter is a private company, so there is no Free Speech violation if the suppression were linked only to Twitter.
But, here there is evidence of overt state action. This is a story of gross government overreach, that suppressed critical debate and questioning, that led to fiat policies, business regulations and civil liberty lockdowns, that weren't based on evidence, that caused many, many citizens to lose their constitutionally-protected liberties. Thank you for the article, but what's next?
It’s crazy that our government can just openly collaborate with Big Tech to control the spread of information. Twitter was supposed to be a town square where everyone could express their opinions without censure. As someone born in a Communist country where the government does in fact control the entire media apparatus, I hate to see that this is also happening in America. It completely goes against what it means to have a democracy.
We the people should not let the government control how we think via mass media. Governments have long used emergencies as an excuse to impose totalitarian rule. We must not let that happen in America. I’m glad we still have sites like Substack where free speech can thrive, where I can write my political opinions down without fear of being imprisoned for them. Thank God for free speech. Let’s hope the government doesn’t try to take more and more of it away from us.
It isn't just crazy, it's unconstitutional. The government cannot legally infringe on right to free speech. Using a company as its puppet to do so does not change that. The employees at Twitter may be legally protected, but the government employees who issued these demands are absolutely in violation of the Constitution.
It’s totally illegal but the relevant jurisdictions are San Francisco and Washington DC so they can do whatever they want.
You get a jury in San Francisco or Washington DC and every single randomly selected person is going to be a total piece of shit. Obviously it’s the same, if not worse, with the judges.
When reading a jury summons, "Total Piece of Shit" is not listed as a requirement for serving as a juror. It may be a requirement for running for judge, district attorney, supervisor, representative, senator, or governor in California and 49 other states and one district!
It is, however, a necessity to get through Voir Dire.
This is becoming more and more obvious. A trial by Jury in DC would be a leftist firing squad.
Not necessarily all bad, especially if it is a 360-degree Oculus special.
“Everyone who doesn’t agree with me is a piece of shit.” How soon until you call for the gas chambers Kevin?
Obviously, it depends on the disagreement. On this particular topic people who disagree with me are, in fact, pieces of shit.
But I liked your point about gas chambers. How often do you cheaply pimp out the Holocaust hoping to win internet arguments?
Do you exploit the Jews who died at the hands of Nazis regularly?
You just stated below that you want “ [Democrats] will finally be cleansed from society permanently.”
What is your preferred method of “cleansing” here? Gas chamber, firing squad or re-education camp?
In this particular case we could just delete their funding.
Don’t worry, it won’t happen. This is a fascist country run by Democrats. It will continue to move in your direction, not mine.
I would go further. Both Republicans and Democrats should be put out to pasture with Lenny and the rabbits. Indict both the DNC and GOP - and their leaders and funders - for racketeering and start over from the founders' preamble.
There is actually a relevant comparison to make to the Eugenics of the Holocaust and the current Eugenics of "trans". In both cases the weak/vulnerable (especially children) are picked off and most of society looks the other way as they do not think they will be personally affected. All institutions are captured by an ideology in both cases - tech & government, education and "medicine" & pharma work together on the project.
"Echoes of Eugenics: What the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg Means for Us in the US
On the 75th anniversary of the trial of Nazi doctors at Nuremberg we examine Nazi medicine and gender-affirming care Aug 30"
https://pitt.substack.com/p/echoes-of-eugenics-what-the-doctors
This dude is evil:
"Dr. Rachel Levine slammed after calling for Big Tech to clean up ‘misinformation’ on sex change"
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/26/dr-rachel-levine-slammed-after-calling-big-tech-cl/
Yep.
Corrupt, $billionaire corporate Democrats are using "tranz" ideology to push child mutilation into America's hospitals and medical research facilities:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers
toxic, psychotic troll
infantile drivel
I wonder how the left wing sycophants like comprof and R T will spin this.
The actions of the Biden and in some part the Trump administration are contrary to this country's principles as laid out in the Constitution, especially the First Amendment.
Censoring the exchange of ideas is what dictatorships do, think Russia and the workers' paradises of China, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela, to name a few.
I am waiting with bated breath to see how the left wingnuts on this BBS spin this. Censorship disgusts me. All the wingnuts will do is adjust their knee pads.
My experience when trying to discuss this with lefties has been that they just repeat their mantra “but one million people have died!” They refuse to listen to anything else.
I wonder how the left wing sycophants like comprof and R T will spin this.
-----------------------------------------------
You spelled trolls wrong
"You spelled trolls wrong" Cute but true.! :)
Censorship disgusts me too, Polecat. But Twitter did not have to comply. No one would have been hauled to court if they refused to censor valid opinions. They had the right to refuse. The fact that they performed the government’s bidding is cowardly yes, but that was also their right.
Mask and vaccine mandates became highly political with the result the Covid death toll among Republicans became tragically greater than that of the Democrats who were more likely to comply. https://politicsofthelastage.blogspot.com/2022/12/update-on-covid19-mask-and-vaccine.html
Lol. Guessing the huge death tolls in all the inner cities we're all republican too. Seems silly, most senior citizens are Rs, think that has any bearing on the finding genius.
I don't know about that, I'm 80 and definitely not an R. Pew Research shows 65+ for R's (and leaning R's) is 25%, while for D's (and leaning D's) it's 23%. That is certainly not enough to explain the differences in mortality by political party. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/06/02/the-changing-composition-of-the-electorate-and-partisan-coalitions/
No the death tolls are largest in rural areas. https://politicsofthelastage.blogspot.com/2022/08/ten-years-from-now-what-will-be-written.html
I just had the most infuriating argument with my dad about this. He claims this is no big deal because of course the government tries to influence public opinion to achieve its aims. I asked by suppression of speech? And he replied it’s what governments do. I responded that it’s what totalitarian governments do, not what the U.S. government is supposed to do. I reminded him that the foundational documents that created the U.S. government explicitly say that it is NOT allowed to do that. Then, he went on to say who cares about Twitter anyway. I sure hope that’s not a representative opinion of most Americans.
Oh it is. If they are even aware of this story, which from my interactions with casual friends (like my gym peeps) they are willfully ignorant. Bugs the heck out of me. Apathy.
So you're saying the government can't tell you to wear seat belts in a car, or to obey red lights at an intersection? The Supreme Court ruled in 1905, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, that the government can enforce vaccinations.
In Jacobson, the smallpox vaccine had a 100 year history, not an EUA, and the penalty for Jacobson refusing it was a $5 fine (about $170 today) not the loss of his livelihood. Also, previous SCOTUS rulings have allowed for returning escaped slaves to their masters (Dred Scott), corralling (Japanese) American citizens in camps (Korematsu), and forcibly sterilizing low-IQ women (Buck v Bell). Jacobson, Korematsu, and Buck were all used by Hitler's Nazi regime to legitimize their treatment of the Jews. So JFYI, citing Jacobson does not make the case that a coercive government action is justified.
Mask and vaccine mandates became highly political with the result the Covid death toll among Republicans became tragically greater than that of the Democrats who were more likely to comply. The FDA made an EUA for the vaccine because they wanted to save lives. https://politicsofthelastage.blogspot.com/2022/12/update-on-covid19-mask-and-vaccine.html
Covid vaccine mandates were highly controversial even among many on the liberal left (as opposed to the illiberal Left) because they forced people to participate in a medical experiment, in total contradiction to the Nuremberg Code, the foundational principles of modern medical ethics. So much for those, I guess.
I think the fact that the Covid 19 vac is NOT FDA approved matters. We have to sign waiver when we get it. So a mandated experimental vaccine.
Plus, I was in general about people who have no desire to be informed beyond what they already believe. And many who are not interested at all.
I agree there should be legal action against the NAZIs in the government but we will never see it.
I’m starting the ‘Rock Bottom’ movement. It’s where we just let Democrats do everything they want and then the devastating consequences will cause them to finally be cleansed from society permanently.
If we keep doing this ‘boiling frog in pot’ thing where Republicans play ineffectual defense then it’s really not clear to the average person who is causing the collapse.
Chris Coons, the allegedly centrist moderate, who is really just a bald communist piece of shit, said that the $1.7 trillion was actually a compromise because he wanted more. I don’t know how much more. He didn’t say. But just give it to them. Let them do it. Give them everything. Collapse the country and make it evident who did it.
There is a communist train of thought taught by a man and wife communist profs at Columbia that teach spend the US into bankruptcy, have a total collapse of the government and out of the ashes, shoulder to shoulder the workers with arise and form a communist paradise, like Cuba or North Korea.
Correct. I think they are wrong about what will happen when the collapse occurs.
Make sense?
I don't know Kev. Lots of people during the great depression, dark times, became communists and if what you are suggesting happens, the great depression will look like a walk in the park. The far left already controls the mainstream media. How do you think the communist news outlets will spin the collapse?
Vaccine and mask mandates became highly political with the result the Covid death toll among Republicans became tragically greater than that of Democrats who generally complied. Republicans refusing to comply with mandates were killing themselves off. https://politicsofthelastage.blogspot.com/2022/12/update-on-covid19-mask-and-vaccine.html
Hey Kevin when you and your buddies come to San Francisco to cleanse the fags, the Jews, the liberals and the other "literal pieces of shit" as you call us off the face of the earth, this armed and well trained ex-paratrooper will be waiting. Better bring an army.
Possibly the grossest smear I have heard against gay individuals and the Jewish people is your suggestion that they all think the same way and they think like you.
"You get a jury in San Francisco or Washington DC and every single randomly selected person is going to be a total piece of shit."
You said it not me. You said that every single person in San Francisco thinks the same and is a total piece of shit. Of course it is just a coincidence that the subject of your ire are the cities with the largest percentage population of gays and Jews in the United States.
"and sooner rather than later, as escalating energy prices and blackouts are confirming People need to know precisely whose heads need to be on pikes."
Not advocating violence at all!
1/505 PIR
Pretty funny that I am the one threatening violence here in your topsy turvy land. Is admiring Pinochet and his propensity to throw political enemies out of helicopters to threatening violence?
Not a bad idea since it's already happening. But please keep the truth coming for us sharp enough to have questioned the narrative and dug deeper. Thank G-d for the honest reporting outlets real America's voice free press war room and now finally twitter
I what you propose happens, history tell us, the communist come out on top every time.
In the short term they definitely do. But they are also going to come out on top with our current trajectory.
Pinochet is not looking like such a bad guy after all......
I have had the exact same thought! My fear though is that the rampant double standards and utter lack of holding people from one camp responsible will quell the rational conclusion. The drive to be "right" and the mindset that ANY actions in pursuit of certain agendas are justified is truly frightening.
I feel the same way. They it fall to shit on their watch.
The US government has never followed the law when it is not convenient to do so. The examples are too long to list but we could start with the Declare War Clause. This is not a country of law, but a country of men (and women). Anyone who believes otherwise is fooling themself.
Although he didn’t articulate it as well, this is exactly what my dad was trying to say.
The government can do whatever we let it do.
You said the word “we” as if you believe thinking people decide elections and then elected officials, not bureaucrats, make the laws.
No. Twitter is just a silly little website video game that doesn’t matter. That’s why they are deploying every resource they have to control it. Because it’s a nothingburger. Make sense?
Lol. That’s all we continue to hear- Twitter isn’t a big deal, not many people use it.. etc... etc... So can anyone on the side of skepticism in Twitter’s reach explain why the government seems to be spending quite a bit of time immediately suppressing the slightest bit of dissent from the approved narratives up to and including monitoring accounts with little to no reach or others that post (clearly) sarcastic tweets.
Listen with skepticism to all of the ‘conservatives’ who hand-wave social media as inconsequential.
It's not crazy; it is against everything that our Constitution stands for.
Remember, our Constitution is a document that grants federal government the right to police certain areas of community life. It also clearly and unequivocally restricts government activities to ONLY those powers enumerated in the Constitution.
The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution and adopted as the first formal legislation by Congress, specifically holds that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Case law developed though more than two centuries of legislation frowns on any involvement by any branch of the federal government irregularly influencing speech in the public arena.
What the Twitter Files are showing is the concerted efforts by agents of the federal government, most specifically those equipped with police powers suggesting private action under the color of authority, actions in full and flagrant violation of every tenet of our protections against tyranny.
If those responsible for these attacks on our liberty aren't brought before courts of law, then metaphorically heads will roll at the ballot box in the next election.
We cannot allow our freedoms to be taken by stealth by those in whom we have trusted our governance, This is an issue on which we need to stand strong..
Clapper and Brennan repeatedly lied under oath and instead of prison, they have high paying gigs on MSM and with institutions of higher learning. Until there are serious repercussions for this behavior why would anyone not continue to lie, cheat and deceive.
But because reliable sources are not covering this the Wikipedia article on the Twitter Files--which will be the narrative once all settles down-- are providing a very biased report on their substance. I tried to add this article and was not permitted as it is considered "self-published."
I used to donate to Wikipedia - but I stopped when I started seeing how biased they had become. Pity. I wonder what they are ‘afraid’ of to allow posting of this article to Wiki?
It's crowd sourced so more people that have a bias prevail--or, after reading Twitter files I am not sure I believe this now. The fact that no substack can be cited because they are "self-published means a lot of potential excellent sources are left out.
Most impt. to know is that Wikipedia only allows what they call reliable source for citation.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources
This makes for a loop that slants in the direction of the acceptable sources.
Thank you for this great comment. Unfortunately our fellow citizens do not yet see what our government is doing as a threat.
Thank you for the wonderful comment.
I find the greatest champions of constitutionally-protected free speech are people who have come from totalitarian societies and seen what life is like without free speech.
I am baffled at the lack of self-awareness of twenty-something Americans claiming that free speech is overrated. It's not like there aren't plenty of voices like your own that will educate them from first-hand experience.
Some 150 Americans voted for two very corrupt, incompetent men, Biden and Trump, because they think and know most politicians are corrupt and incompetent.
So why is anyone surprised that 150 million Americans think it's okay for Big Corrupt Governments to corrupt a tiny social media platform or two?
It's not simply the mass media - they are coming downwind from the Ivy League schools.
The thought control is happening there, where you will not be allowed into the upper class network if you are not compliant. Once they graduate, they get into power and live out the commands of their leaders.
The universities are the problem.
Yes. I wrote a whole essay about what you are saying:
https://societystandpoint.substack.com/p/from-latin-to-latinx
It was excellent! Thanks for sharing, I'll check out more of your work.
Openly conspire? If not for Musk only suspicion would be possible. Just as we suspect but don't know what transpired with the other social media platforms. What is clear, our government bureaucrats, akin to parents of "otherly abled" children, feel righteous in their determinationto limit what we know and believe.
I’m 100% against what Twitter did, but free speech is a bit tricky these days. I mean, do you allow hate speech, child porn, etc? Who decides what we should hear and what we should not, and what that line is. Or do you just allow everything?
Hate speech isn't a thing, which the SCOTUS has repeatedly ruled on, it's just a made up concept that the Left utilizes to shut down debate for illogical positions it supports. Not sure child porn has ever been considered a form of speech, and I've never heard of free speech being used to defend the promulgation of it.
Free Speech is the enemy of the Left, which is why the permanent government and major media doesn't support it.
Well said!
Except child porn is ILLEGAL. If it’s illegal in the real world - guess what? - it’s illegal on the internet. Everything that is actually illegal isn’t “free speech.” So there goes THAT argument. I think you counter hate speech with MORE a speech - you don’t censor it. You call it out, use it as a lesson.
Conflating child porn with hate speech is ridiculous. Hate speech is a made up concept. Child porn is an abomination. It should carry the death penalty.
Yes but disagreeing with me on solar panels is kinda child porn if you think about it.
Just like hate crimes. There is only crimes. There is only speech.
Shrinks say pedophilia is incurable therefore you either kill them or give them life in prison, no parole.
Castration?
No, you have to get them off the streets, permanently.
I have said this many times before on this BBS. If you don't like what is being said, be your own censor. Change the channel
Thank you for clarifying I honestly wasn’t trying to make a point, but was more curious.
Countering hate speech with more free speech makes sense.
I have a simple solution…ensure that everyone has to post their name, face, and home address when posting. My guess is a lot of this nonsense ends overnight.
I don't agree with posting home address! But I do think that the real identity of people who post on the internet needs to be proven before they are allowed to post anywhere online. No hiding illegal behavior with anonymity.
Respectfully, I don’t think making people a target by publishing their home address will promote free speech....
Not “promote free speech”, but it would likely ebb a lot of the hate speech and intended misinformation.
The law of unintended consequences. So much for your “simple solution.”🤣 NOOOOO. Insisting that people put themselves at risk in order to promote their ideas is INSANE and would quite literally promote a CHILLING of free speech 🤦🏻♀️
Hate speech is a phony construct.
Oh weird you just mentioned some vague things to distract from government censorship….
Child Porn is illegal....Period. Not a free speech issue...never has been.
Tell Twitter…
Musk's people seem to have managed to remove most of the child porn accounts within a week. The thousands of now-fired Twitter employees who ran the system before then could not be bothered to remove those accounts. That says some very disturbing things about the people who used to be in charge at Twitter.
Yes it does.
There is plenty of child porn on Twitter. As long as the children are being groomed by a transgender person, or the kids themselves are trans-identifying, it's all good.
What exactly IS "hate speech"? Child porn is illegal. Who decides what we should hear and what we should not? You, the free human individual decide FOR YOURSELF (and for your minor children). You DON'T decide for me, or your adult friends and family, your neighbors, etc.
Related:
"Dr. Rachel Levine slammed after calling for Big Tech to clean up ‘misinformation’ on sex change"
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/26/dr-rachel-levine-slammed-after-calling-big-tech-cl/
and
"BREAKING: Libs of TikTok shows her face for first time in epic Tucker Carlson interview
"I think there’s something so unique about — the LGBTQ community has become this cult and it’s so captivating," Raichik said."
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-libs-of-tiktok-shows-her-face-for-first-time-in-epic-tucker-carlson-interview?utm_campaign=64487
You mean "Thank God for whatever free speech remains" don't you?
Your constant comparison of China to the US is getting old. There's a difference between not being able to speak and saying anything you want. Speech, especially when it comes from people with influence, has consequences.
I’m a free speech absolutist. I will gladly stand up for the speech of people I disagree with- Nazis, Communists, white supremacists, black supremacists, etc. Because by classifying any speech as hate speech, that opens the door to other people doing it to your speech too.
I miss when the ACLU was like that. Now it’s turned into another arm of the Democratic apparatus. I don’t subscribe to Foucauldian views about power, which is perhaps why we disagree.
Agreed! I miss Ira Glasser. The Canadian Civil Liverties Union is still doing some good work, which is good, because they really need it there, with the authoritarians that run their government.
The problem with absolutism is the tendency to be closed to new ideas. I appreciate your passion to allow for any kind of speech. I agree it's a slippery slope for anyone to police speech without some inherent bias. Usually i have some idea of a solution but this is a tricky one because many people are being irresponsible with their influence online. We know how Hitler used his speech to influence hate. It's easy to have ideological hubris until you're on the receiving end of a consequence.
Hitler and his thugs threatened anyone who spoke up against them. They won an election by a very small margin, and proceeded to completely shut down any dissent, sowing their tale that all problems were the fault of the Jews who succeeded by plotting against the poor Aryans for centuries. If any of this sounds familiar, maybe it should. It’s a complete revision of history to claim that shutting down speech would have prevented the rise of the Nazis.
Hitler and his thugs did not rise to prominence overnight. They started with falsehoods, misinformation and hate speech to gain impressionable followers too weak to think for themselves or ones that were evil as well.
The “speech has consequences” argument is getting old. Especially when offered by those who have set themselves up as the moral elites who should be the ones to determine the consequences.
People who can say anything they want are only a danger to people who deal in fantasy.
Twitter may have been under intense pressure by both Administrations, the CDC and the WHO - but did they have to set up the apparatus to moderate contrarian but still valid points of view?
No. They could have denied requests to censor debate. The fact that they stifled real debate is onerous but well within their right as a company.
I think the real issue here, hiding in plain site, is the monopoly Twitter had as being the main platform for public debate - so important that people thought it truly was a public square owned by all.
But it is merely a corporation attempting to make money. We should never have thought it was ‘our’ bullhorn to use. It never was.
Respectfully, I think the "real" issue is that multiple federal agencies actively and intentionally lie to us to push destructive and stupid policies using whatever vehicle of public propaganda that will bend the knee to serve their power and privilege.
Federal agencies have been lying to us for multiple decades. Nothing new there. As for your statement that they use platforms which will bend the knee to accommodate them I heartily agree.
Hence my point of Twitter being the monopoly platform. It was easy to target and it had no competition of comparable size.
If there is only one TV station how easy is that to control and coerce? But a multi thousand channel universe?
Much more difficult. Same here.
Had there been a few other Twitter size platforms out there this story might have played out differently.
There's a word for the union of state and corporate power. I believe they call it "fascism."
The existence of fascism is a conspiracy theory. Please report to your local prison.
What prison? You mean happy fun re-education camp?
Yeah the re-education camps are awesome. There’s drag queens and shit.
😂😂😂
What kid doesn’t love a good story hour?
Do you joke about the actual existence of political re-education camps where millions were starved to death as a way to score political points often?
Such as the concentration camps run by China to rape, cow and murder people who are not Han Chinese?
What other civilized nations do that? Weren't there trials 70 years ago of those who did?
You’re a Holocaust denier so I’m not super concerned about your opinion.
hyper toxic, low IQ troll
infantile drivel
infantile drivel
THANK YOU!!!
you proved that you are a toxic, low IQ troll.
It's like summer camp. The left loves camping.
Ha!
infantile drivel
And the union of state power, corporate power, the healthcare system, the education system, the entertainment industry, religious institutions and the public press, is called "fascist totalitarianism."
This is why Democrats project their fascism onto Trump. It's why they encourage and spread Christophobia, because there are still holdouts within religious institutions that have not yet bent the knee to DEI.
DEI is fascism. And remember, Obama promised a revolution at the same time that BLM was founded as a communist revolutionary movement.
All of this is by design.
Obama was raised in a communist household. The hand that rocks the cradle.
incorrect.
those are all features of high-social-trust, "classically liberal", "capitalist" market societies.
"capitalism" co-emerged with high-social-trust institutions, such as Constitutional order.
what you and a lot of other people are incorrectly calling "fascism" is actually neo-communism, specifically postmodern neo-marxism (see James Lindsay for elaboration).
actual historical "fascism" was nationalist and a reaction to the horrors of Soviet-internationalist communism (Stalin).
the "woke" left is an internationalist veneer on globalist corporate-states, neo-communism.
incorrect.
Those have only been sold as such, in reality, they are the opposite. Obama has been overtly undermining social trust, the intelligence agencies have been undermining everything classically liberal, and the "capitalist market" is being undermined by fiat currency.
Anyone honestly believe that if the feds ever get control of healthcare in the US, your position in line for medical procedures will directly mirror your adherence to the state?
You are absolutely correct. It is the definition of fascism.
Spot on!
no it isn't.
Some have described the NAZI relationship with business as controlled capitalism a melding of government and business. There is a debate among scholars on this.
Historical fascism, explained by a real (German) historian:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041217124550/http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/world/lectures/fascism.html
sure, but mostly irrelevant.
historically, fascism was an ILLIBERAL, revolutionary, nationalist movement, usually with ultra conservative religious elements.
the current, dominant form of "leftism" is postmodern, neo-marxist, globalist, anti-nationalist, anti-populist that either ignores or explicitly rejects traditional religion, and substitutes "woke" faux religion (upheld by the PMC, New Clerisy) that advances the interests of billionaire, media tech oligarchs.
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/reality-honks-back
excerpt:
... a passage from the late Christopher Lasch’s book The Revolt of the Elites ... is worth repeating here:
The thinking classes are fatally removed from the physical side of life… Their only relation to productive labor is that of consumers. They have no experience of making anything substantial or enduring. They live in a world of abstractions and images, a simulated world that consists of computerized models of reality – “hyperreality,” as it’s been called – as distinguished from the palatable, immediate, physical reality inhabited by ordinary men and women. Their
[->] belief in “social construction of reality”
[->] – the central dogma of postmodernist thought
– reflects the experience of living in an artificial environment from which everything that resists human control (unavoidably, everything familiar and reassuring as well) has been rigorously excluded. Control has become their obsession. In their drive to insulate themselves against risk and contingency – against the unpredictable hazards that afflict human life – the thinking classes have seceded not just from the common world around them but from reality itself.
...
The general terms are totalitarianism/authoritarianism. Both "historical fascism" and communism are totalitarian.
Historical fascism was a reaction to the horrors of Soviet communism (Stalin).
Communism and neo-communism (and neo-marxism) require some kind of leadership cult or in the case of "woke" Orwellianism, a more elaborate faux religion, which is typically a reworking of the basic elements of Christianity: some object or idea that is seen as "evil" and "sinful". "Wokeness" holds to the idea that "whiteness" and "patriarchy" and tranzphobia/homophobia are "evil".
(Side note: the "alt-right", NRx and similar populist-right movements in the USA are largely rooted in neo-confederate, working class Appalachian culture, not "fascism" or "white nationalism".)
"Democracy" has historically always involved the co-emergence of private property, individual achievement (agentic values), and high-social-trust in social institutions such as Constitutional order, and nuclear family structure (see Henrich at Harcard, on the W.E.I.R.D. model). Older social systems had other forms of social order, such as mythic religion, clannish family structures (including dynasties) and medieval european Fealty Oaths.
Over 1,000 years ago the NW european gene pool began to select for "classically liberal" personality traits because of a historical "accident": the Church banned cousin marriage, which created more genetic variability, which led to Manorialism and the nuclear family. During the "black death" plagues, peasants in clannish, rural social structures died at much higher rates than "liberal" urban commoners (church and court scribes, shopkeepers, river and sea traders, merchants, etc.)
"Woke" and liberal-progressive-leftist totalitarians are far more neo-communist than they are (historically) "fascist".
Historical fascism was nationalist-revolutionary.
Communism is internationalist-revolutionary.
Both are/were revolutionary, and ANTI-LIBERAL.
"Woke" neo-communism (neo-marxism) is ILLIBERAL/INTOLERANT.
Radical/extremist movements, including leftism, tend to be magnets that attract mentally dysfunctional people.
Here is a good description of classical fascism:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041217124550/http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/world/lectures/fascism.html
(By Professor Gerhard Rempel, 1990s?)
excerpt:
... fascism as an effective movement was born of fear.
Each stage in the rise of European fascism can be related to a moment of middle-class panic caused either by economic crisis or by its consequences, the threat of socialist revolution.
1. The success of the socialists in the Italian elections of 1919 made Italian fascism a political force.
2. Hitler's Munich Putsch in 1923 came in the year of the great inflation when the communists figured on seizing power in Berlin.
3. Hitler's rise to power in the state followed the great depression of 1929 to 1932.
4. The Spanish Falange was a response to Spanish anarchism. Franco's coup was the response to the electoral victory of the Popular Front.
European fascism, then, was a political response of the European bourgeoisie to the economic recession after 1918, or more directly tot he political fear caused by that recession. So, above all, it was anti-communist. This anti-communism was one oft he few things that made it international. Other than that and its social base, it was heterogeneous and varied widely from country to country. There were two basic reasons for this heterogeneity. One is historical; the other is structural.
Historically fascism was essentially nationalist. Structurally it was always something of a coalition. Italian fascism and German fascism were necessarily more distinct than Italian communism and German communism would be. Behind the vague term fscism there lie in fact two distinct social and political systems. These are both ideologically based, authoritarian, and anti-parliamentary liberalism. But they are different and the confusion between these essentially different systrems is an essential factor in the history of fascism. These two systems can be described as clerical conservatism and dynamic fascism. Every fascist movement was compounded of these two elements in varying proportions and the variety of mixtures relates in some degree to the class structure of the society involved.
...
What a great essay! I liked it.
Classical communism was international class struggle (marxist revolution).
Communists openly stated that their goal was the destruction of "capitalism", "liberalism", Constitutional order, etc. ("western civilization")
Classical communism was and is classical fascism. Woodrow Willson, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Putin, etc. are all classical totalitarians and fascists.
Soviets flamed anyone who opposed them as "fascists", but they were and are the most fascist totalitarians of them all. Putin still is showing his communist and fascist real Putin.
you are incompetent.
fascism explained by an actual (German) historian:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041217124550/http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/world/lectures/fascism.html
I love the comment where you tell someone they are “incompetent” but you have to edit the comment. I’m cackling.
😂😂😂😂😂
You don't actually "love" anything. You are a sociopath that gets pleasure from other people suffering.
TOXIC. TROLL. BAZZHOLE. BULLY.
You are extremely toxic, and you are playing silly word games. SPELL CHECKS, IDIOT.
Your intellect is at about the lower middle school level.
Toxic, incompetent TROLL. BULLY, BAZZHOLE. LUNATIC.
Where's ANTIFA when you need em?!
Out fighting free speech, like the good fascists they are!
Yes, "fascists" like Putin, Stalin, Mao and Woodrow Wilson used government power to silence political opponents and critics. All but Wilson kill and killed political opponents. See Russia's fascist invasion of Ukraine.
Wilson threw Eugene Debs in prison for simply protesting against Wilson's policies.
incorrect.
Stalin and Mao were communist totalitarians, the natural enemies of actual "fascists".
the common use of the word "fascist" is mostly useless.
Russian communists, the pure fascists, took word fascist and used it against Hitler.
Hitler, like Mussolini, one of the original fascist, was a socialist, just like the Russian communists.
Totalitarians is a politically correct word that comments section moderators prefer to fascists, which is not politically correct, but it is the word that describes Mussolini socialists, communists and Nazis as well as a lot of American politicians, left and right, who demonize political opponents in an effort to silence them.
Your narrative is completely scrambled and you understand little or nothing about history.
Actually, I've spend decades studying history, and I haven't been brainwashed by leftists who think everyone else is a fascists. They don't even get that the worst American racists have been Democrats. Trump is a Democrat. :)
more garbled narrative
‘Fascist’ is a synonym for socialist.
You work for George Soros.
This is a more detailed description of the differences.
https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate/comment/11412022
Your ignorance is appalling.
What socialism/marxism and fascism have in common:
1. they were both outgrowths of romanticist (anti-modern, anti-rationalist) ideology
2. they were both ILLIBERAL (in the sense of "classical liberalism")
Beyond that, marxists and fascists tried to murder each other whenever they got a chance.
Your hyper toxic stupidity knows no limits, but is completely predictable as an example of idiotic "alt right" type troll scripts.
Vapid drivel.
Psychotic liar.
Alex Jones troll farm bot.
Again, you are grossly incompetent, extraordinarily stupid, and you are incapable of anything beyond ridiculous, performative word games.
"socialism" (communism) was based on revolutionary, international class struggle and atheism
"fascism" was also revolutionary, but a nationalist reaction against the threat of communism, aligned variously with ultra conservative religious conservatism (Franco, latifundismo, etc.) and/or personality cults
A description of historical fascism by an actual (German) historian:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041217124550/http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/world/lectures/fascism.html
You are a profoundly ignorant buffoon. Your silly word games are meaningless and absurd.
Okay so my word games are: silly, meaningless, ignorant, incompetent, stupid, ridiculous, and performative.
What other words do you have to describe my word games?
You are a low-class simpleton.
sociopathic manipulator
you are a psychotic liar and troll
and you are still playing silly word games
get some new troll scripts that aren't so low IQ, D1PSH1T
My favorite Democrat Science Argument™️ in favor of the Biden Injection™️ was the one about how VAERS is unreliable so a spike in adverse events doesn’t really mean anything.
It’s hilarious because that isn’t an argument that the COVID vaccine is safe. It’s actually an argument that we don’t really know if *any* vaccines are safe, because that’s how we monitor their safety. So if VAERS doesn’t work then it’s not great.
Good lord these people are psychopaths.
Sometimes adverse event data doesn't give an accurate picture of drug safety because they have to report every event, whether it's minor or only happened to one person. That said, in drug trials, if they see a huge spike in serious adverse events, they usually stop the trial. They don't turn around and mandate the offending drug. This is what happens when there's too much cross pollination between government and big pharma.
I don't know what VAERS are but I agree.
And more adverse events were reported from the Covid vaccine than from ALL OTHER VACCINES COMBINED. The VAERS system has been in place since 1990. Pretty sure you can't watch this on YouTube (still censoring). https://rumble.com/v20t0m4-new-documentary-anecdotals-movie-covid-vaccine-damage.html
No but you don’t understand. The system we use to track damage from vaccines doesn’t work. So the COVID vaccine is safe. Flawless Science Logic™️.
You forgot the /sarc tag for the newcomers.
He forgot the /stupidtroll tag
vapid drivel
You work for a non-profit funded by George Soros.
You just proved that you are a psychotic troll and an absurd liar. That was easy.
Thank you BikerChick. I watch all two hours of this documentary and all it did was piss me off. What happened to the people harmed by the vaccine is criminal.
I personally know a 21 year old man who contracted transverse myelitis 2 weeks after his second shot. They just write it off as coincidence every.damn.time.
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
Zero scientific or evidence-based information on VAERS. It is simply a system that anyone can report on and scientist will then go through it and glean what they seem is appropriate to follow up on, based on something like, I don’t know, medical school. 
This is false.
No, it is not.
your rhetoric is vapid and infantile
That’s not rhetoric. That’s logic.
Enormous difference.
vapid drivel
Well I know who to skip when I’m looking for ideas.
Thanks and Happy New Year.
what you "look for" is irrelevant
infantile drivel. troll
I think you need to upgrade to a Thesaurus.
Your comments are getting wearisome. This isn’t Twitter 1.0.
Your cowardice and stupidity are wearisome. This IS a cesspool full of mental sewage from trolls, bots, idiots and lunatics.
Are you seriously defending "Kevin Durant?" a giant bazzhole troll?
You are a pathetic excuse for a human being. Or more likely yet another lunatic AI bot.
Whoa. I am a person. What the heck. You are out of line.
Lucy, it’s the latest hand gesture to avoid engaging with an idea one doesn’t like. “You’re not a human, you’re a bot!”
Kind of pathetic if you think about it.
Thanks Marie. I’m not ‘hip’ to newspeak. It’s unsettling. Most people on TFP are respectful and nice, even if/when they disagree.
No, it is a well developed idea in evolutionary psychology, MEMETIC REPLICATION, that you are too ignorant and uninformed to be aware of.
You are like a dog that barks stupidly at anything it isn't used to seeing.
That used to be called NARROW MINDEDNESS.
Dullards like you are narrow minded, and expect people to defer to your mindless blather and groupthink even when you clearly never learned anyone's actual respect for rational, systematic, objective thinking.
What is pathetic is your inability to have an original thought outside of your toxic bubble/echo chamber.
you sound like a bot
https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate/comment/11437293
Why have you not addressed the 800 lb gorilla? Many physicians who pointed out the value of repurposed drugs; hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoximine, vitamins c and d, povidone, p were suspended from Twitter and ridiculed and lost licenses thanks to Twitter's draconian policies. Do you need a list of Dr's? I understand you have an Atlantic magazine rep to uphold but don't bother bringing this half hearted weak sauce to the discussion if you think glossing over the big issue works w this crowd.
It gets worse if you’re a physician here in CA where Newsom has now passed legislation where medical professionals can lose their license if they spread “misinformation “. However, no one is clear what is meant by “misinformation” (although I think we all know that anything against Newsom’s agenda, whatever that is, will be labeled as “misinformation “).
So now you have a bunch of doctors scared to death of saying the wrong thing, which ultimately will result in a loss of research, critical thought, and eventually the death of science.
The solution, easier said than done, is catch the next Greyhound out of Dodge. People are leaving, that shit hole and I say that literally, and moving to other states that have real people making policy, not like those nut cases in California. I need to amend that. Not just California but the entire west coast.
The solution is to fix broken sense-making systems, institutional dysfunction and corruption.
But that would require you to learn how to think instead of regurgitating absurd "truther" and conspiracy narratives.
Aren't you the unhappy, angry one? BTW, I am a conservative and I don't even know what a truther is much less be one. So stop being a one topic rant. You sound just like comprof and R T. All of their rants are "You must have voted for the Orange Man." like that answers all topics. I find it not only stupid but insulting. So stop being stupid and join the conversation. Otherwise, you just sound, well .... stupid.
you do not have to understand toxic conspiracy theories (or think in general) to copy/paste them.
web search: "truther conspiracy"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_truth_movement
aren't you the toxic, incoherent troll?
you are grossly incompetent, which is no surprise.
I'm going to guess that you have little or no idea what Bari Weiss is writing about, you just subscribed to make silly noises in the comments and have kindergarten temper tantrums.
Could you please stop this nonsense.
At this point, you are the troll, destroying conversation on Substack at each and every forum you join. So, as you are the common factor of this, please stop.
Just don’t come here!!!
I'm with you.
And go where? Many Californians left for AZ and now AZ is blue.
Meh. California has been bleeding serious research for years. And "critical thought" left there after the "dot com" bubble and never returned.
One of the reasons the left disparaged hydroxychloroquine, a drug that has been in use safely for about 40 or 50 years, was that it had bad side effects. All drugs have bad side effects. Aspirin has bad side effects as does ibuprofen. One of the side effects is they may cause death but that doesn't stop tens of millions of people from taking aspirin and ibuprofen every day.
What the Biden admin and his minions did was criminal.
Incidentally, I have given more doses of HCQ than I can count and have never seen torsade once. (Yes it can happen -- so can being struck by lightening.) Even worse, finding ANY bad reaction to ivermectin requires an electron microscope to search to find one -- it may be the safest effective drug ever. Both of those are likely 1000x safer than the spikeshots.
This entire debacle has been exactly that -- the question is, what is anyone, ever, going to do about it?
Given the BILLIONS of doses of Ivermectin administered over the years, a pretty good argument can be made from the existing data that it is, indeed, the safest drug of all time. That is one of the reasons it won a Nobel Prize.
Dr. I think that is the sub-question, albeit an important one. For me, the question is why this campaign of lies was fomented and who was behind it. The old cui bono schtick. And it seemed to start with the dwarfish buffoon to whom the media turned starting the lies by claiming that "the Choineeze are beying trans-parent." A liar from the start and self-interested. But deeper forces were clearly behind this campaign of deception about the pandemic.
Yeah, while I don’t see biting so hard because this article (about suppression of free speech by actual experts by computer children) as “glossing over” the very real topic of the suppression that was also being done against Dr.’s who were desperately trying reasonable measures such as “Off Label” drug use. The Off Label argument is totally valid and especially important considering it was at the very front of the pandemic, during classic “fog of war” conditions. But I don’t react as if the article is junk just because it doesn’t put THIS issue on the top of a big stack of issues.
Fauci stood there and shot down anything that differed from his agenda as invalid because it didn’t have “triple blind studies” to prove it. He beat thousands of Drs into Pavlovian obedience, even though HE had nothing of value to handle the old people dying right then, in real time.
Heck, I watched Trump (who could finance a new skyscraper in an hour but couldn’t jump a dead battery on a car - he’s just not technical) - Trump simply tried to say “well what about this ivermectin stuff, it’s been used safely for 50 years”. He was excoriated by idiots who had no answers of their own, and in the media domain that can barely spell their own names let alone manage a new pandemic.
At the front end of a crisis with no known cure or preventions, we should WANT the diverse attempts -Gottlieb’s (?) “I go to war with the weapons I have” should be a lesson coming out of this pandemic.
Here is the part that I don’t get...hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoximine, et.al., are drugs to treat people AFTER they have gotten Covid. Why wouldn’t people, especially the vulnerable (i.e., elderly, obese, and those with underlying conditions) just get the vaccine to prevent serious illness in the first place??? The unvaccinated were overwhelmingly those who were hospitalized and dying from Covid. The adverse effects from the vaccine, after hundreds of millions of doses given, has been shown to be negligible at most.
The vaccines do not provide protection and make one more likely to die. Seems a bad deal.
That’s a false statement about making one more likely to die. They do not. It’s true that they do not necessarily provide protection in spreading, but they overwhelmingly protect people from serious disease and death. And if you have any peer reviewed studies that indicate otherwise, please post. Note: that does not include data from quacks like Steve Kirsch who makes up his own BS claims.
LOL this was rather funny, the all-cause mortality is higher for vaccinated. I'll take my health over giving Pfizer money.
Please post link to study that indicates this.
One factor:
blacks, especially non-college-educated/poor blacks, have deep memories of the Tuskegee experiments (abuses of power and unethical/illegal medical experiments).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
as of July 11, 2022, 87% of Asian, 67% of Hispanic, and 64%of White people had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, higher than the rate for Black people (59%).
There is a spectrum of quasi-religious beliefs that map into various kinds of personalities and subcultures with reference to the social control narrative of the political and media elites and the medical and science establishment.
It's complicated.
Lots of social critics and theorists came up with different thoughts as the COVID thing developed. I followed Zubin Damania (ZDoggMD) and to some extent Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, and watched numerous social media flame wars between extremists on both sides and various positions in between.
The debates and flame wars within the scientific and medical community exposed both a set of people promoting "bad science" on the conspiracy side as well as corruption on the corporate side of the medical "establishment".
The number of bizarre contradictions that were woven into the emotional narratives that people grabbed into was astonishing, from people fetishizing the medical establishment and demanding conformity to corrupt state authorities and corporations on one side to bizarre, paranoid conspiracy theories driven by massive, corrupt marketing networks on the other.
There are plenty of arguments that can made for either side, but few that even begin to attempt to holistically and systematically examine all of the known facts and evidence. Most people will pick and chose the least uncomfortable narrative for themselves.
To deny that extremists in the "Q Anon" and "anti-vaxxer" cult are mentally dysfunctional or that there are significantly corrupt and extremist elements in the corporate medical establishment exist is not realistic.
The system worked for some people and failed for a lot more.
One consistent feature of the crisis is that lots of peoples' "sense making systems" are deeply broken, and there aren't many ways to easily fix them.
Since nature abhors a vacuum, it got filled with a lot of nonsense and fake narratives.
Another strange phenomenon is that even though Trump should get a lot of credit for Operation Warp Speed, the unvaccinated are 3x more likely to lean Republican.
Why have you not addressed the prevalence of bizarre if not psychotic "truther" conspiracies that exploited the failures of the medical establishment?
Are you the designated DNC commenter of the day? Because if so, the should demand a refund. From the very beginning of the pandemic, the complicity and duplicity of Red China was covered up by the leftist media. Why? The identify of the most vulnerable was hidden and the relative invulnerability of the young and healthy was minimized. Why? Even as vaccine efficacy was failing, the mandates to take them became more shrill. Why. And when brilliant doctors such as Makary, Risch, Bhattacharya, McCullough - all from prestigious institutions tried to speak the truth, the propaganda machine went into overdrive. Why?
Why don't you stop being a shill and open your eyes to real science?
Bruce, don't answer this guy. I know this will sound crazy but he's worse than compro and R T combined. The way he rants, he must have a screw loose. Don't encourage him. Stop answering his wild, vile insults. He's not here to exchange ideas. He's here to insult and stir the pot. the guy's an angry, unhappy nut.
Thanks for this info. I don't recognize the usernamr, but do recognize his symptoms.
He must be off his meds.
conspiratard narrative, groupthink
Why does Bari Weiss allow you D1PSH1TS on her substack???
the only thing you "recognize" is absurd, low IQ groupthink
You can't answer the question, so you post more conspiratard tr0ll narratives.
you are incompetent and can't make up your mind, so you contradict yourself.
standard behavior from a troll that gets meaning from groupthink and scapegoating.
You can't answer the question, so you post conspiratard tr0ll narratives.
Trump admin not wanting people to panic buy food is not equivalent to silencing hundreds of doctors opinions who signed the GBD.
Thank you for publishing this article. We must continue this discussion over and over again.
Gross. We all suffered from this and we haven't recovered yet, maybe never will. It's much worse than COVID itself. No more "trusting the experts" for us, and this is an immesurable loss.
There's a saying that "trust is gained in drips but lost in buckets." Dr. Fauci CHOSE to blow the entire reputation of the CDC on white lies and manipulations ... during a pandemic. The CDC will probably never regain public trust in our lifetimes. And they deserve that skeptical treatment, by the way. They 110% earned the bed they are going to lie in. It is just a shame that the human cost will be far beyond the realm of COVID.
And he chose to do that in order to cover up his blatant conflicts of interest.
Love the saying.
You are so correct. Once the rose colored glasses came off-it is permanent. I will never trust AMA or government again-on anything. It is all about greed power and control of the masses.
Even at the time I was calling the COVID policies one of the greatest human rights abuses in all history, starting when they doomed tens of millions to die by saying "don't shut down your borders until after you get an endemic infection because it's racist to prevent disease".
Your narrative is incoherent. The article cites a number of heterodox experts that were attacked and censored by a dysfunctional and corrupt media, political and medical establishment.
The solution is for people to learn how think better and demand reforms of corrupt institutions.
I just realized that the reason they used the mRNA vaccines is because of how unpopular the wRNA is.
It’s a Brittney Griner joke. Sorry.
This joke is so funny that I’ll trade my joke about a Russian arms dealer for it. Instead of that joke about a Marine.
LOL I was just writing about my ‘wipe privilege’ joke from the toilet paper shortage. I’m proud of that one.
😂😂😂
Dang, Kevin was always a riot but with Sheluyang to egg him on this comments section is turning into the best comedy I've seen in years!
They make a good team. Don't they? Bud Abbot and Lou Costello.
💃🏻💃🏻
Can't believe there's no article today. I got used to there being something new every day.
infantile drivel
Apparently the lefty words of the day are “vapid” and “drivel”.
Apparently your ignorance and toxicity are "endless" and "absurd".
TR0LL
iNfAnTiLe dRiVeL
infantile drivel
“One aarea of so-called misinformation: “runs on grocery stores.” The trouble is that it wasn't misinformation: There actually were runs on goods.”
-----------------------------------------
I remember when toilet paper was hard to find because that’s when I did the joke about how people who have toilet paper have ‘wipe privilege’.
It’s one of my best jokes.
When you run out of TP, that's what dollar bills are for.
infantile drivel
As a paid George Soros troll, don’t you feel the obligation to at least use different words occasionally? Or do you think that if you type “infantile drivel” 471 times then people will still think you’re a normal account?
psychotic, vapid drivel
more mental sewage from the conspiratard troll farm
as a delusional, insane conspriatard, don't you feel the obligation to stop getting drunk all day and posting intellectual flautulence and psychotic delusions to Bari Weiss' comments section?
do you think that if you post billions of smug, arrogant, psychotic troll scripts from the Alex Jones troll farm, that people will still think you're a normal account?
REPORTED:
re: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate/comment/11435844
Dear substack publication admins,
Please delete the hyper toxic lies [by https://substack.com/profile/12301825-bruce-miller] at the above link, and ban the lying troll that posted that comment.
https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate/comment/11435844
No, that is the whole point of me exposing toxic assholes like you, to get people to complain to Bari Weiss about her lack of responsibility in curating her comments section so that psychotic trolls like go away.
And: to get her to pressure substack to implement a block function so that no one has to even see your psychotic lies and trolling.
If you think making a fool of yourself is "exposing toxic assholes" then knock yourself out. It's actually quite amusing to see you throw yourself around like a demonic toddler. Or a mental patient endlessly repeating the same disjointed phrases.
I actually can’t think of two worse people for “e. pierce” to run into on the internet than myself and Bruce Miller.
😂😂😂
You just exposed yourself as a toxic asshole, again. congratulations, D1PSH1T
While the serious journalists investigating this stuff deserve our gratitude, I surely can't be the only one who saw this power game for what it was early on. It seemed to me obvious. The government wanted its way and Twitter, et al let them have it. Sad to say, perhaps, but to me it's already old news. The bigger story is the covert corruption of government by unelected bureaucrats. Until that is given full airing, we're just playing the same old parlor game.
The problem goes very far back. Government and power elites in general have been manipulating public opinion for a long time.
As far as social media goes, some tech historians have speculated that it (and the internet in general) was invented primarily as a mechanism to spy on american citizens.
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/14/in-undisclosed-cia-investments-social-media-mining-looms-large/
non-paywalled:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160414202028/https://theintercept.com/2016/04/14/in-undisclosed-cia-investments-social-media-mining-looms-large/
To further the examples of how this censorship can spread, consider that California (where else?) doctors risk losing their license to practice medicine if they contradict public health orthodoxy. We are becoming the totalitarian regime of the type we have long criticized. We have to push back while we still can. https://californiaacep.org/news/618676/Newsom-signs-bill-to-police-California-doctors-on-COVID-19-misinformation.htm
I just posted something very similar. How this is not debated at the highest levels is insanity.
I couldn't agree more.
I have worked closely with the feds for almost 25 yrs. Mostly I have worked in DoD, but some time at the FBI and with other IC agencies. Worked at the Federal Reserve, the FCC, the FDIC and Treasury. Spent a short time at HHS, CDC and DHS.
I'm also a student of history and I have read a lot of the history of our government, particularly since WWII.
I also live and work in the DC area.
I'm telling you that you have to be willfully ignorant to not understand the danger that a federal bureaucracy poses to civil liberties even when the intentions are basically good. Incompetence and ignorance can permeate the machine. Misaligned incentives and political pressures just add to the problem. Throw in politics in the form of congressional pressure, directly or from staff or political appointees, which itself is often derived from influential donors and you start to see how even the best intentions can become corrupted. Now toss in the fact that most of the people we are talking about live in a wealthy, powerful bubble, that they are to a large degree arrogant as to their own intelligence, and you see how things like this can happen. (Never forget that 3 of the countries 5 wealthiest counties surround DC)
I have zero respect for bureaucrats and consider the alphabet agencies the greatest threat to the citizens of the US.
Well, I will say that I have known a lot of good and well intentioned bureaucrats. Known a lot of very smart ones too.
BUT....I have also known a lot of corrupt ones and a lot of idiots as well.
That said, the system these people work in is designed to break even the best of them. And, I would point out, that for all of these people, it is a JOB. Like any job, they are incentivized to do certain things based on what they are measured on and who is doing the measuring. If the FBI agents in the field are being measured and their performance evaluated based on what is appearing on Twitter, they are going to act accordingly. Same for places like the CDC. If they are being pressured by congress critters to study obesity instead of viruses, they are gonna study obesity. If they are being pressured through budget threats or investigative threats to say that a vaccine is a panacea, they will find a way to get there and make the bosses happy. Never mind that often they are put in a position to do something they know is stupid but because some congress critter got some law or rule pushed through in a bill they have to do it or risk losing their jobs and pensions or...in some cases being charged with breaking the law.
I can think of one perfect example. The national cancer registry. CDC runs one that it provides to the states. (Not gonna get into the details, but let's just say it is a cluster fuck) BUT......The national cancer institute runs one too. Both cost millions to build and maintain. Both are mandated by congress. Both track essentially the same information, with one or two slight differences. Now, the CIO's in both those places know this is a stupid waste of money but both are stuck on congressional mandates they cannot wiggle out of. Now, WHY congress has done this is anybodies guess. Lobbying by the vendors? Pure ignorance? Who knows?
My son wants to go to work with CBP to fight the cartels.
I’m begging him to stay away from any federal position because he’s a principled young man who will not bow and do what he knows to be wrong. It’s bound to end in disaster.
That said, I’m sure there are decent people in the alphabet agencies. I’ve never met one but my previous statement was overly broad at an individual level.
At the organizational level I absolutely believe the federal executive branch is hands down the greatest threat to every American whether they acknowledge it or not.
You are making me think of Hannah Arendt. At what point must a person of conscience say No?
That is a good question. But I would point out that for many, if not most, of these people, having a conscience can cost them their careers and if an agency is vindictive enough, it can bankrupt or put them in jail.
Blowing the whistle or being outspoken in a system that does not tolerate it and which also has nearly unlimited resources to drag you into court for a civil suit or which can have you charged with some crime just to harass you and make an example of you, is a huge huge personal risk for some person that just wanted a job fixing software or analyzing data or testing things in a lab.
I can imagine some poor schmuck at CDC blowing the whistle on something like the Moderna Covid Vaccine and presents government data to prove their point. First they will get fired. Then the government will turn to the media to discredit them and claim the data was only preliminary or out of context. Then the Moderna folks will get on them and dig into their personal lives looking to discredit them. Then, the lawyers for the agency will suit them for violating an NDA or terms of employment. Then the DoJ will get involved claiming they revealed confidential government information. It just goes on from there. Some slob with 2 kids in college, a mortgage and two car payments is risking a LOT. Even IF they avoid jail, they will be bankrupted by the lawyers, their reputation destroyed and their employment prospects destroyed. The system does not tolerate dissent regardless of which party is in charge.
Yes, this is fair. A cost-benefit analysis is warranted. No one wants to ruin their lives for nothing. But no one wants to be like those people in Nazi Germany who kept their heads down when the trains went by, either. We should all be grateful for the dissenting doctors who spoke out about this early, Malone, Battacharya, et al. We should be grateful for people of conscience willing to do what is right even at great cost to themselves.
Yes. It’s easy to see what the bureaucrats mess up. Remember how CDC couldn’t produce a test kit for COVID ? !
I watched nearly every press briefing at the beginning and watched Trump trying to run cover for them (his “own” CDC as it was). S. Korea was well into testing when CDC finally got over their overly complex fetish of a test and produced one - but when they shipped it the kits were contaminated and local labs were finding that pure water was getting positive results for COVID. Several Universities and local labs had viable tests they had developed but weren’t allowed to use! Pure bureaucratic incompetence and indignance.
The ideologues and Grievance Studies major moonlighting as Twitter employees led the charge in shutting down debate, inquiry, and skepticism — all integral to real science — and instead enforced a culture of counterproductive moralism, in this case unilaterally deciding to override dissenting experts in an area of core competence during the middle of a pandemic.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/the-twitter-files-part-ii-censoring
Don't forget their dehumanization and targeted hate campaigns of "the unvaccinated" and the "anti-vaxxers".
there are lots of insane "anti-vaxxers". and trolls.
and conspiratardz
Great reporting, thank you for this and for all your work against lockdown. While undeniably true that it behaved terribly, even if Twitter had allowed dissenting voices, I don’t know what difference it would have made when literally every “mainstream” medical authority was all in on Covid madness. The American academy of pediatrics literally lied about basic info on child development and then blatantly scrubbed evidence from their own website! You wrote a great piece about the AAP I linked at the time that showed the totalitarian measures they were taking against their own members:
https://gaty.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-studies
Even with Twitter not censoring, the corrupt medical establishment would have gone into overdrive to strip doctors of careers, and to plant fake stories in the news. Freeing Twitter isn’t enough, AAP delenda est!
HOLD ON......
Sure Twitter acted badly and peremptorily but they can't steal our liberty. Our all powerful government, however, can and they did. So my real problem is with the Biden cabal, their crooked FBI Stasi pukes, their media flacks and legions of wannabe docs and Karens hectoring people and whining and scolding that "Jesus would have mandated the vaccine."
As Dr. Kulldorff sagely noted, it was known early on that the virus was a disease of the elderly and infirm and there was no need to imprison the young and the healthy. Even less need to vaccinate them with an experimental vaccine. Question is what game were the Democrats playing to suppress the truth, mandate the vaccine and ruin the economy? More important, why? This is a good start but we need to smash open this web of lies and bring the malefactors to justice.
Cui bono?
That’s always the question
Yes. But the answer will explain everything.
Take note of who is retiring out of the US Congress. There’s the first clue.
This is a story of complete governmental overreach that violated citizens' rights to free speech. Yes, Twitter is a private company, so there is no Free Speech violation if the suppression were linked only to Twitter.
But, here there is evidence of overt state action. This is a story of gross government overreach, that suppressed critical debate and questioning, that led to fiat policies, business regulations and civil liberty lockdowns, that weren't based on evidence, that caused many, many citizens to lose their constitutionally-protected liberties. Thank you for the article, but what's next?