DOCUMENTARY: Kids: Chasing Paradise

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Saving Children From Radicalization By Extremists

Childhood is supposed to be a special time in a person’s life. A time to grow and play, to explore and learn about the world. All children deserve a peaceful upbringing and the opportunity to pursue a meaningful life.

But today, extremists are abusing children and teaching them hatred and violence.

Christianne, Tania, Nicola, and Micah all suffered the heartbreaking loss of a family member due to extremism. Kids: Chasing Paradise follows their courageous journeys and their inspirational efforts to become champions of activism for children worldwide.

Watch the Kids: Chasing Paradise trailer.

Kids: Chasing Paradise is a powerful documentary film that explores the personal stories of ordinary people becoming extraordinary activists to save children from radicalization.

A new Clarion Project documentary, KIDS: Chasing Paradise, uses shocking hidden camera footage and eyewitness accounts to show how purveyors of hate and terrorist organizations rob victims of their childhoods in order to transform them into extremists willing to kill and die for their cause.

Watch the film for free and donate to our campaign to reach more people with its important message.

Every $10 donated will help us reach an additional 20 people.

Watch the full film

©The Clarion Project. All rights reserved.

Vaccinated Have 26% Higher Mortality Rate

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This is a massive human rights crime. It’s evil.

Vaccinated Have 26% Higher Mortality Rate

From UK Government Data Presented to U.S. Senator Ron Johnson

By: Dr. Panda, December 13, 2022:

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) is holding roundtable discussions with experts and medical professionals on COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and safety. The discussions feature prominent doctors such as Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Ryan Cole.

At the latest roundtable meeting titled “COVID-19 Vaccines: What They Are, How They Work and Possible Causes of Injuries” they featured Josh Sterling, a highly-acclaimed insurance analyst and founder of “The Insurance Collaboration to Save Lives.” Sterling says “the best statistics we have” and “the one chart that tells the entire story” all point to higher mortality rates in those who took COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

You can find the clip of the video here.

He pointed to UK government data which, until recently, broke down mortality by vaccination status. The last available dataset, shows the people in the UK who took the vaccine have a 26% higher mortality rate than the unvaccinated. The people under the age of 50 who took the vaccine have a 49% higher mortality rate. The people who took only one dose of the vaccine have an astonishing 145% higher mortality rate than the unvaccinated.

Why is there such a higher mortality rate in persons who took only one dose?

Josh explains that the people who took the first dose and stopped were the ones who were disproportionately harmed from the start. They most likely were the ones who experienced mild or moderate side effects. They conclude if you were mild or moderately harmed by the first dose of the vaccine and decided not to continue, statistically, you have a 145% higher chance of mortality, at least as it stands today – without any treatments, cures or interventions.

How does this data apply to the United States?

If you took the UK data and applied it to the United States (without any adjustments) that ends up being 600,000 extra vaccine-induced excess deaths per year. Yikes!

Stirling also said these are “the best statistics we have … at least through today, maybe it will get better,” but at this point, “we’ve got to assume this is now the baseline. There’s going to be 145% higher mortality.”

Senator Johnson found the single-dose statistics “pretty interesting” saying almost everyone knows someone who had a severe reaction to the first dose and didn’t take a second one.

Not really important but I’d like to add while doing research on “The Insurance Collaboration to Save Lives” Google was no help only providing propaganda on vaccines. Duck Duck Go had the result I needed at number 1 (not endorsing Duck Duck Go).

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Twitter Files: Chinese Employee Told Coworkers Censorship Is Bad, Got Shut Down

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“Maybe because I am from China, I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.” 

Twitter Files: Chinese Employee Told Coworkers Censorship Is Bad, Got Shut Down

By ALANA MASTRANGELO

Elon Musk’s Twitter released another batch of internal discussions on Monday, which revealed that an employee from China tried to warn fellow Twitter employees that censorship is wrong. The employee was then shut down by a coworker who bizarrely retorted: “censorship by a government is very different than censorship of the government.”

“Maybe because I am from China, I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation,” a Chinese Twitter employee said to colleagues during an internal discussion about whether or not to ban then-President Donald Trump’s account.

A fellow Twitter employee responded to their Chinese coworker saying, “I understand this fear, but I also think it’s important to understand that censorship by a government is very different than censorship of the government.”

Keep reading….

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Convenes Anti-Semitism Summit While Funding Murder of Jews

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If the Biden administration wants to fight anti-Semitism, it can stop funding anti-Semitic terrorists.

On December 4th, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stopped by J Street’s annual conference being held at a D.C. hotel owned by a Spanish airline and famous for its haunted ‘ghost suite’. But the real ghosts were those of the murdered Jews whose lives had been taken by the pro-terrorist policies that Blinken and the anti-Israel group he was celebrating had imposed on Israel.

Blinken, who had served as the vice chair of the board of directors for Human Rights First, an anti-Israel group, before his current appointment boasted of the $890 million in taxpayer money directed to the “Palestinians”. Fungible funds that will inevitably subsidize the murder of Jews.

Three days later, Kamala’s husband convened a high-profile D.C. summit to fight antisemitism. Unmentioned at the summit was that the Palestinian Authority’s Supreme Sharia Judge, and a special adviser to its terrorist ruler, Mahmoud Abbas, had recently slurred Jews with the traditional Islamic insult of “apes and pigs”.

That’s not the antisemitism that the summit was looking for.

Muhammad Al-Lahham of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, which runs the political movement behind the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority, was caught on video praising the “patriotic conscience” of a terrorist who had opened fire on a rabbi taking his 2-year-old son for a walk.

“Fatah does not made do with condemnations alone. Fatah emphasizes that vengeance must be wreaked upon the occupation, and that the souls of the martyrs must be avenged,” the official warned while boasting of the Palestinian Authority’s involvement in the murder of Jews.

“If we speak about 2022, around 170 Martyrs ascended,” Al-Lahham claimed. “Most of those who died as Martyrs while resisting, 90% of them were Fatah members. Yes, if  the number of those killed among the occupation was 20, Fatah is the one that carried out these operations.”

A member of the Palestinian Authority’s ruling class was bragging about killing 20 Jews. And in D.C., a member of the Biden administration was bragging about helping finance the PA.

Secretary of State Blinken claimed that, “we will always condemn acts of terrorism or violence targeting civilians. There can be no justification for it ever, and anyone who engages in it must be held accountable. As President Biden has often said, we’ll also condemn those who fail to condemn such attacks – or, even worse, who praise or reward terrorists or their families.”

And yet he and his ambassador have never once condemned the terrorists by name. They only condemn the abstract principle of terrorism, not the actual terrorists who commit the attacks.

The Palestinian Authority spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year on its Pay-to-Slay program which rewards terrorists or their surviving family members with large sums of money.

This year was the 20th anniversary of the Hamas bombing of the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria at Hebrew University. The families of the terrorists who did it received millions from the PA.

Janis Ruth Coulter from Massachusetts, who had been guiding foreign students on campus,  Marla Bennett from San Diego, who was studying on campus, Benjamin Blutstein of Pennsylvania, who was about to become a teacher, and David Gritz, a pianist from Massachusetts, were among those killed in the Hebrew University terrorist attack.

Unable to cut off the hundreds of millions of dollars from our government going to the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority, families of the victims took the terrorist organization to court. They won $218.5 million in damages, potentially cutting off some of our funding to the terrorists.

“Initially I was elated to hear the verdict, then a minute later I was crying because my son is still dead,” Katherine Baker of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Benjamin’s mother said.

The Obama administration however went to work defending the PLO. It complained that the initial award was too big and would cripple the terrorist regime’s ability to function.

Blinken, then deputy secretary of state, submitted a sworn statement complaining that anything that “deprives the PA of a significant portion of its revenues” would “undermine several decades of U.S. foreign policy”. He concluded by offering some crocodile tears, along with “grief and outrage” for the “grievous injuries and losses suffered by the American victims of the attacks”.

The Anti-Terrorism Act, that Blinken claimed he supported, had been passed in response to the PLO murder of Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly American in a wheelchair. According to Blinken, the act specifically passed to hold the PLO accountable, couldn’t be used to hold them accountable.

This year, on the 20th anniversary of the murder of four Americans, the terrorists got a pay hike of 14%. That’s on top of the $2.5 million they’ve already received over the last 20 years.

Who paid for it? The hundreds of millions that Biden pumped into the PA no doubt helped.

According to Blinken, funding terrorists so that they could kill Jews was in the national interest in 2015. It’s still in the national interest today with Biden, Blinken and Power resuming the flow of massive amounts of money to the Palestinian Authority, not to mention other Islamic terrorists.

It might be time to consider the possibility that it’s because they want to see more dead Jews.

When someone spends enough time, effort and money to kill you, it might be smart to consider the possibility that he wants you dead, rather than that he has entirely benevolent motives that lead him to cause harm to you on a regular basis. The latter is what’s known as gaslighting.

The essence of recognizing antisemitism is to simply admit that when someone says that they hate you, they really mean it, and when they try to kill you, it’s because they want you dead.

Gaslighting is at the heart of Democrat foreign policy toward Israel. The constant undermining of Israel and empowerment of its enemies is always rationalized. And Jews do much of the rationalizing. But the rationalizing falls apart when people start actually paying attention.

At J Street, Blinken went on a tear, warning that his administration would “work relentlessly to prevent any parties from taking actions that could raise tensions or further raise tensions and push the two-state solution even further out of reach.”

The target of all that “relentless” activity would be Israel.

The secretary of state’s examples of the acts that he would “relentlessly” and “unequivocally oppose” were “settlement expansion; moves toward annexation of the West Bank; disruption to the historic status quo at holy sites; demolitions and evictions; and incitement to violence.”

All but the last are specific references to Biden administration criticisms of Israel.

Despite a wave of Islamic terrorist attacks in Israel, one of which recently killed a Canadian 16-year-old boy and wounded an American teenage girl, Blinken falsely claimed that he had “seen dramatically higher levels of violence in the West Bank, perpetrated by both Palestinians and Israeli settlers”.

After repeatedly criticising Israel at the J Street hate conference, Blinken conceded that the “Palestinian Authority must carry out meaningful reforms” and “must demonstrate that it has the will and it has the capacity to be a true partner in a process that can lead to two states”.

Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority, however recently warned, “I do not adopt military resistance at this time, but it is possible that I change my mind tomorrow or after tomorrow, or any time.”

According to the man whose terror regime Blinken has been funding, he might turn to terrorism tomorrow or at any time. But according to another top official, they’re already responsible for 90% of the terrorism including the murder of 20 people. And that’s a drop in the bucket since the PA continues devoting hundreds of millions to its Pay-to-Slay program that sponsors terrorism.

There’s been no reaction to this. Instead, the Biden administration continues to threaten Israel and to warn that it will boycott some Israeli ministers whom it considers to be “far right”.

But at J Street, Blinken led a round of applause for Hady Amr, the administration’s emissary to the PLO, who admitted that he was “inspired by the Palestinian intifada.”

Hady Amr had accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and coordinated an organization that had smeared Israel as “apartheid”. And warned “every Israeli” that Arab Muslims would “never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done” and that “thousands who will seek to avenge” the air strike that took out a Hamas leader.

That is not too extreme for the Biden administration.

Addressing J Street, Blinken gushed that, “Hady is here today.  I hope you appreciate the applause.  As all of you who work with him know, his knowledge, his experience, his relationships, his principles will make him an ideal leader for this role.”

To know Hady’s principles is to know Blinken’s and Biden’s principles as well.

While it’s nice that Kamala’s husband took time out from his busy schedule to convene an antisemitism summit, the listening session amounts to nothing in the way of policy. Antisemitism is indeed rising, and no administration is likely to do much about it, but the one thing this administration could do is to stop funding the murder of Jews.

Unfortunately that’s too much to ask.

“I’m 12-years-old, I’m from New York, and I’m going to stay alive,” Jamie Sokolow remembered saying when the family fell victim to an attack in Jerusalem after her father had survived 9/11.

These were the people Blinken had worked to thwart to continue funding the murder of Jews.

That is what J Street, most recently lubricated by a $1 million Soros donation, is dedicated to.

If the Biden administration wants to fight antisemitism, it can start by doing the most basic thing possible and end its ongoing financial and political support for the worst anti-Semites in the world who describe Jews as “apes and pigs” and call for the extermination of the Jewish people.

But it won’t. And that tells us everything we need to know. The rest is just empty words.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Dept. of Energy Freak Brinton Fired Following Luggage Thefts

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In an email to the Daily Signal on Monday, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) spokesperson declared that the “openly genderfluid” Sam Brinton is no longer an employee following two accusations of luggage theft at separate airports.

“Sam Brinton is no longer a DOE employee,” the spokesperson said. “By law, the Department of Energy cannot comment further on personnel matters.”

The firing comes after Sam Brinton received a felony charge last month for allegedly stealing a woman’s luggage at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on September 16. Video surveillance footage from the baggage claim area showed Brinton removing a navy blue roller bag that did not belong to him (he did not originally check a bag for the flight, meaning he had no reason to visit baggage claim), removing a luggage tag from the bag and placing it into a handbag he was carrying, and then leaving the area “at a quick pace.” The female victim, who estimated the bag cost $2,325, confirmed to police that the navy blue bag Brinton took was hers.

Last week, Brinton stood accused of stealing another woman’s luggage at the airport when investigators with 8NewsNow revealed on Thursday that Brinton took a woman’s luggage at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. “A felony warrant was issued for Sam Brinton, a deputy assistant secretary, sources said. The charge is for grand larceny with a value between $1,200 and $5,000, records showed,” reported the outlet.

So Brinton has been fired because of his kleptomania but not because of his grotesque fetish for women’s clothing and makeup, nor for his hosting of “spanking seminars” and teaching “Kink 101” workshops on college campuses.

Well, whatever it takes to get this criminal embarrassment out of office.

Sam Brinton

4 Known Connections

Sex Play Between “Pups” and Their “Handlers”

In his spare time, Brinton is heavily involved in “puppy play,” an activity where grown men derive sexual gratification from wearing dog masks and behaving like animals. As a 2016 Metro Weekly article about this phenomenon explains:

In the pup community, handlers function the same way dog owners do, keeping a watchful eye on their charge and reining in the pups if needed. It’s the handlers who train the pups and teach them discipline, doling out rewards or punishments based on good or bad behavior.

“Think of any bio-dog,” [Pup] Gryphn says. “You can train them. It’s this ‘go do this’ reward system, just like a bio-dog. So let’s say you’re playing fetch, you throw the ball, the pup picks it up, brings it back, and drops it at your feet. You’re going to reward him, whether it’s petting him or anything like that.

“Or, let’s go to an extreme,” he continues. “Let’s say you’re doing pup play around the house and the pup decides to pee on the floor. Obviously the pup is going to be punished for that. Typically, when we’re being humans, it’s ‘Why would you correct me in front of so-and-so? That’s wrong, don’t do that. Don’t speak for the next five minutes,’ something like that.” […]

Others have polyamorous or open relationships in their personal lives that allow them to have a kink partner who is separate from their real life spouse or partner. Depending on the spouse, they may either shun pup or other fetish scenes entirely, or slowly be brought into the fold after becoming more comfortable with their significant other’s bedroom preferences.

Brinton, who at that time was the handler of a 24-year-old “pup” named Nubi, spoke at length to Metro Weekly about the handler-puppy relationship: “It’s the concept of the teacher and nurturer…. My job is to make sure that while he’s in headspace, I’m keeping him safe…. Pup and I have what I feel is one of the most ideally perfect connections between our personal and kink life. Both of us have other partners, so we come into this space, and then we come out of it, knowing the boundaries of where your kink and non-kink relationships begin and end.”

To learn more about Sam Brinton, click here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This DTN column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: DisRespect for Marriage Act and Superintendent Indicted over Handling of Sexual Assaults

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GUESTS AND TOPICS

JUDGE PHIL GINN

Judge Phil Ginn was appointed president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in April 2021 after a distinguished career as both a lawyer and a judge. He holds a B.A. from Appalachian State University, a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Doctor of Ministry from Southern Evangelical Seminary. Prior to his appointment as SES president, Judge Ginn served as SES Chairman of the Board of Trustees.

TOPIC: Respect for Marriage Act

TINA RAMIREZ

Tina Ramirez is a Virginia mom and Candidate for the Virginia Senate. She is the Founder & President of Hardwired Global which is an international non-profit organization that works for human rights around the world. She lives in Chesterfield, Virginia with her daughter, Abigail.

TOPIC: Superintendent indicted over handling of sexual assaults…

©Conservative Commandoes Radio and AUN-TV. All rights reserved.

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‘I thought crypto exchanges were safe’: The lesson in FTX’s collapse

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The safest way to store cryptocurrency is in your own crypto wallet.

Anthony* (a friend) called a few weeks ago, deeply worried.

A deputy principal of a high school in Queensland, over the past year he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying cryptocurrencies, borrowing money using his home as equity.

But now all his assets, valued at A$600,000, were stuck in an account he couldn’t access.

He’d bought through FTX, the world’s third-biggest cryptocurrency exchange, endorsed by celebrities such as Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, basketball champions Steph Curry and Shaquille O’Neal, and tennis ace Naomi Osaka.

With FTX’s spectacular collapse, he’s now awaiting the outcome of the liquidation process that is likely to see him, 30,000 other Australians and more than 1.2 million customers worldwide lose everything.

“I thought these exchanges were safe,” Anthony said.

He was wrong.

Not like stock exchanges

Cryptocurrency exchanges are sometimes described as being like stock exchanges. But they are very different to the likes of the London or New York stock exchanges, institutions that have weathered multiple financial crises.

Stock exchanges are both highly regulated and help regulate share trading. Cryptocurrency exchanges, on the other hand, are virtually unregulated and serve no regulatory function.

They’re just private businesses that make money by helping “mum and dad” investors to get into crypto trading, profiting from the commission charged on each transaction.

Indeed, the crypto exchanges that have grown to dominate the market — such as Binance, Coinbase and FTX — arguably undermine the whole vision that drove the creation of Bitcoin and blockchains — because they centralise control in a system meant to decentralise and liberate finance from the power of governments, banks and other intermediaries.

These centralised exchanges are not needed to trade cryptocurrency, and are pretty much the least safe way to buy and hold crypto assets.

Trading before exchanges

In the early days of Bitcoin (all the way back in 2008) the only way to acquire it was to “mine” it — earning new coins by performing the complex computations required to verify and record transactions on a digital ledger (called a blockchain).

The coins would be stored in a digital “wallet”, an application similar to a private bank account, accessible only by a password or “private key”.

A wallet can be virtual or physical, on a small portable device similar in appearance to a USB stick or small phone. Physical wallets are the safest because they can be unplugged from the internet when not being used, minimising the risk of being hacked.

Before exchanges emerged, trading involved owners selling directly to buyers via online forums, transferring coins from one wallet to another like any electronic funds transfer.

Decentralised vs centralised

All this, however, required some technical knowledge.

Cryptocurrency exchanges reduced the need for such knowledge. They made it easy for less tech-savvy investors to get into the market, in the same way web browsers have made it easy to navigate the Internet.

Two types of exchanges emerged: decentralised (DEX) and centralised (CEX).

Decentralised exchanges are essentially online platforms to connect the orders of buyers and sellers of cryptocurrencies. They are just there to facilitate trading. You still need to hold cryptocurrencies in your own wallet (known as “self-custody”).

Centralised exchanges go much further, eliminating wallets by offering a one-stop-shop service. They aren’t just an intermediary between buyers and sellers. Rather than self-custody, they act as custodian, holding cryptocurrency on customers’ behalf.

Exchange, broker, bank

Centralised exchanges have proven most popular. Seven of the world’s ten biggest crypto exchanges by trading volume are centralised.

But what customers gain in simplicity, they lose in control.

You don’t give your money to a stock exchange, for example. You trade through a broker, who uses your trading account when you buy and deposits money back into your account when you sell.

A CEX, on the other hand, acts as an exchange, a brokerage (taking customers’ fiat money and converting it into crypto or vice versa), and as a bank (holding customer’s crypto assets as custodian).

This is why FTX was holding cash and crypto assets worth US$10-50 billion. It also acted like a bank by borrowing and lending cryptocurrencies — though without customers’ knowledge or agreement, and without any of the regulatory accountability imposed on banks.

Holding both wallets and keys, founder-owner Sam Bankman-Fried “borrowed” his customers’ funds to prop up his other businesses. Customers realised too late they had little control. When it ran into trouble, FTX simply stopped letting customers withdraw their assets.

The power of marketing

Like stockbrokers, crypto exchanges make their money by charging a commission on every trade. They are therefore motivated to increase trading volumes.

FTX did this most through celebrity and sports marketing. Since it was founded in 2019 it has spent an estimated US$375 million on advertising and endorsements, including buying the naming rights to the stadium used by the Miami Heat basketball team.

Such marketing has helped to create the illusion that FTX and other exchanges were as safe as mainstream institutions. Without such marketing, it’s debatable the value of the cryptocurrency market would have risen from US$10 billion in 2014 to US$876 billion in 2022.

Not your key, not your coins

There’s an adage among crypto investors: “Not your key, not your coins, it’s that simple.”

What this means is that your crypto isn’t safe unless you have self-custody, storing your own coins in your own wallet to which you alone control the private key.

The bottom line: crypto exchanges are not like stock exchanges, and CEXs are not safe. If the worst eventuates, whether it be an exchange collapse or cyber attack, you risk losing everything.

All investments carry risks, and the unregulated crypto market carries more risk than most. So follow three golden rules.

First, do some homework. Understand the process of trading crypto. Learn how to use a self-custody wallet. Until governments regulate crypto markets, especially exchanges, you’re largely on your own.

Second, if you’re going to use an exchange, a DEX is more secure. There is no evidence to date that any DEX has been hacked.

Lastly, in this world of volatility, only risk what you can afford to lose.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

AUTHORS

Paul Mazzola

Paul Mazzola is a Lecturer in Banking and Finance, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Wollongong More by Paul Mazzola

Mitchell Goroch

Mitchell Goroch is a Cryptocurrency Trader and Researcher at the Centre for Responsible Organisations & Practices, University of Wollongong. More by Mitchell Goroch

RELATED ARTICLE: Democrat Mega Donor Ponzi-Crook Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested Before He Could Testify before Congress

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Political and Scientific Censorship Short-circuits the Quest for Truth

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Those who seek to streamline online discourse, according to “official standards”, end up impoverishing public debate.

Over the course of the past decade, numerous regulatory authorities, both public and private, have increasingly positioned themselves as guardians of the integrity of our public sphere, standing watch over the content of information, and flagging or suppressing information deemed to be harmful, misleading, or offensive.

The zeal with which these gatekeepers defend their power over the public sphere became evident when billionaire Elon Musk promised to undo Twitter’s policy of censoring anything that contradicted leftist ideology or questioned the safety of Covid vaccines. There was an uproar, a wringing of hands, and lamentations, as “experts worried” that Twitter would collapse into a den of “far right” extremists and misinformers.

Sound and fury

Threats by the EU Commission to fine Twitter or even completely ban the app in Europe, if it did not enforce EU regulations on hate speech and misinformation, show that the hand-wringing over Twitter’s potential embrace of free speech is much more than empty rhetoric: the European Commission has declared its intention to force Twitter to revert to its old censorship policies if it does not play ball. According to Euronews,

The European Commission has warned Elon Musk that Twitter must do much more to protect users from hate speech, misinformation and other harmful content, or risk a fine and even a ban under strict new EU content moderation rules.

Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner for digital policy, told the billionaire Tesla CEO that the social media platform will have to significantly increase efforts to comply with the new rules, known as the Digital Services Act, set to take effect next year.

Censorship has recently occurred principally on two fronts: Covid “misinformation” and “hate speech.” Some forms of censorship are applied by agencies of the State, such as courts and police officers; others by private companies, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Google-YouTube. The net effect is the same in both cases: an increasingly controlled and filtered public sphere, and a shrinking of liberty of discussion around a range of topics deemed too sensitive or “dangerous” to be discussed openly and freely.

Censorship, whether public or private, has proliferated in recent years:

  • First, there was Canada’s bizarre claim that people had an enforceable human right to be referred to by their preferred pronouns
  • Next, UK police were investigating citizens for using language the police deemed “offensive”
  • Then, we saw Big Tech giants, in particular Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, censoring perspectives that dissented from their version of scientific and moral orthodoxy on issues such as transgender rights, vaccine safety, effective Covid treatment protocols, and the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

Now, advocates of censorship have argued that it is all to the good that vile, hateful and discriminatory opinions, as well as every conceivable form of medical and scientific “misinformation,” are shut out of our public sphere. After all, this makes the public sphere a “safe” place for citizens to exchange information and opinions. On this view, we need to purge the public sphere of voices that are toxic, hateful, harmful, and “misleading” on issues like electoral politics, public health policies, and minority rights.

Thin ice

While there is a strong case to be made for censorship of certain forms of manifestly dangerous speech, such as exhortations to suicide or direct incitement to violence, the hand of the censor must be firmly tied behind his back, so that he cannot easily decide for everyone else what is true or false, just or unjust, “accurate” or “misleading”, innocent or offensive.

For once you hand broad, discretionary powers to someone to decide which sorts of speech are offensive, erroneous, misleading, or hate-inducing, they will start to purge the public sphere of views they happen to find ideologically, philosophically, or theologically disagreeable. And there is certainly no reason to assume that their judgement calls on what counts as true or false, innocent or toxic speech will be correct.

The fundamental mistake behind the argument for aggressive censorship policies is the notion that there is a set of Truths out there on contested political and scientific questions that are crystal clear or can be validated by the “right experts”; and that anyone who contradicts these a priori Truths must be either malicious or ignorant. If this were true, the point of public discussion would just be to clarify and unpack what the “experts” agree are the Truths of science and morality.

But there is no such set of pristine Truths that can be validated by human beings independently of a free and open discussion, especially on difficult and complex matters such as infection control, justice, climate change, and economic policy. Rather, the truth must be discovered gradually, through the vibrant back-and-forth of dialogue, debate, refutation, and counter-refutation. In short, public deliberation is fundamentally a discovery process. The truth is not known in advance, but uncovered gradually, as an array of evidence is examined and put to the test, and as rival views clash and hold each other accountable.

If we empower a censor to quash opinions that are deemed by powerful actors to be offensive, false, or misleading, we are effectively short-circuiting that discovery process. When we put our faith in a censor to keep us on the straight and narrow, we are assuming that the censor can stand above the stream of conflicting arguments, and from a position of epistemic and/or moral superiority, pick out the winning positions in advance.

We are assuming that some people are so smart, or wise, or virtuous, that they do not actually need to get their hands dirty and participate in a messy argument with their adversaries, or get their views challenged in public. We are assuming that some people are more expert and well-informed than anyone else, including other recognised experts, and may therefore decide, for everyone else, which opinions are true and which are false, which are intrinsically offensive and which are “civil,” and which are “facts” and which are “fake news.”

Needless to say, this is an extraordinarly naïve and childish illusion, that no realistic grasp of human nature and cognition could possibly support. But it is a naive and childish illusion that has been enthusiastically embraced and propagated by Big Tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in their rules of content moderation, and it is a view that is increasingly finding its way into the political discourse and legislative programmes of Western countries that were once champions of freedom of expression.

It is imperative that the advocates of heavy-handed censorship do not win the day, because if they do, then the public sphere will become a hall of mirrors, in which the lazy, self-serving mantras of a few powerful actors bounce, virtually unchallenged, from one platform to another, while dissenting voices are consigned to the shadows and dismissed as the rantings of crazy people.

In a heavily censored public sphere, scientifically weak and morally vacuous views of the world will gain public legitimacy, not because they have earned people’s trust in an open and honest exchange of arguments, but because they have been imposed by the arbitrary will of a few powerful actors.

This article has been republished from David Thunder’s Substack, The Freedom Blog.

AUTHOR

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society. More by David Thunder

RELATED VIDEO: Lib Gets OWNED When GOP Rep. Uses Her Own Testimony Against Her In Real-Time

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Fauci merges COVID & Climate

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“Infectious diseases ‘largely the result’ of human ‘encroachment on nature’ & ‘often aided by climate changes’.” — Anthony Fauci

“What lab leak!? COVID was caused by climate change!? Fauci and the public health establishment want to keep both climate and COVID fears humming along to push their so-called solutions, so what better way than to merge the two issues!? Worried about COVID-19, then you had better support the UN Paris climate pact, the Green New Deal, and carbon taxes — or else you are a gramma killer!” — Marc Morano

Fauci merges COVID & Climate:

Infectious diseases ‘largely the result’ of human ‘encroachment on nature’ & ‘often aided by climate changes’ – Published in New England Journal of Medicine

Fauci on December 1, 2022, in New England Journal of Medicine:

Fauci: “As I prepare to step down from my dual positions at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), where I have been a physician-scientist for 54 years and the director for 38 years, a bit of reflection is inevitable.” … 

Fauci: “The emergence of new infections and the reemergence of old ones are largely the result of human interactions with and encroachment on nature. As human societies expand in a progressively interconnected world and the human–animal interface is perturbed, opportunities are created, often aided by climate changes, for unstable infectious agents to emerge, jump species, and in some cases adapt to spread among humans.”

Flashback 2020: Anthony Fauci: COVID-19 is due to ‘extreme backlashes from nature’ – ‘Will require changes in human behavior’ & ‘Other radical changes’ – ‘Rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence’

Great Reset By Marc Morano – Chapter 12 Excerpt: ‘COVID Lockdowns Morph to Climate Lockdowns’

Watch: Morano on Fox News’ Dan Bongino reveals the ‘UN climate/Great Reset summit’ in Egypt where COVID & Climate Merge & ‘Democracy goes to die’

By: Marc Morano – Climate Depot – December 12, 2022, 3:51 PM

Climate Depot Special Report

New England Journal of Medicine – December 1, 2022

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2213814

It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over…but It’s Never Over — Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases

List of authors. Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. – From the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.

Published December 1, 2022

N Engl J Med 2022; 387:2009-2011
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2213814

Fauci Excerpts: As I prepare to step down from my dual positions at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), where I have been a physician-scientist for 54 years and the director for 38 years, a bit of reflection is inevitable.

[ … ]

Today, there is no reason to believe that the threat of emerging infections will diminish, since their underlying causes are present and most likely increasing. The emergence of new infections and the reemergence of old ones are largely the result of human interactions with and encroachment on nature. As human societies expand in a progressively interconnected world and the human–animal interface is perturbed, opportunities are created, often aided by climate changes, for unstable infectious agents to emerge, jump species, and in some cases adapt to spread among humans.

Related: 

Flashback 2020: Anthony Fauci: COVID-19 is due to ‘extreme backlashes from nature’ – ‘Will require changes in human behavior’ & ‘Other radical changes’ – ‘Rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence’

Fauci, in a September 3, 2020 paper published in the biomedical journal Cell Press: “Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence…”

Former NYT reporter Alex Berenson responds: “But, see, if #COVID-19 turns out to be a testing-driven lil-bit-worse-than-a-bad-flu year, what then? Maybe we WON’T need to redesign all of human existence because some 79-year-old bureaucrat wants us to?”

“Why does Dr. Anthony Fauci, a division-level bureaucrat whose day job includes the word ‘allergy,’ think his brief now includes redesigning all of human society? And how monstrous must his ego have become for him to be willing to say so publicly?” Berenson asked.

2022: State Department official joins panel linking COVID origin to ‘human impact on ecosystems’

COVID/Climate Merging: Modeling study claims: ‘Climate Change Will Make Pandemics Like COVID More Likely’

“Climate change is creating a new age of infectious dangers.” Climate Change Could Spark Future Pandemics – “The research, published in Nature, uses modeling to map how climate change could shift the geographic ranges of 3,100 mammals species and the viruses they carry by 2070. … The findings suggest that climate change could “easily become the dominant [human] driver” of cross-species virus transmission by 2070, the authors say.”

Marc Morano: “They want to keep both climate and COVID fears humming along to push their so-called solutions, so what better way than to merge the two issues!? Worried about COVID-19, then support the UN Paris climate pact, the Green New Deal, carbon taxes, etc. or else you are a gramma killer!”

Marc Morano comments: “The climate movement is now merging their focus on linking viruses to “climate change” and thus making fighting climate change a part of fighting deadly viruses. Global warming promoters know that they should never let a crisis go to waste. They are pouncing on any opportunity to inject climate change into the COVID-19 issue.

They want to keep both climate and COVID fears humming along to push their so-called solutions, so what better way than to merge the two issues!? Worried about COVID-19, then support the UN Paris climate pact, the Green New Deal, carbon taxes, etc., or else you are a gramma killer!

The activists will then attempt to piggyback efforts like the Green New Deal as a part of future virus-fighting strategies. Already, media reports are claiming more Green New Deal Style policies are needed because ‘efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions may not be enough to stave off the increased transmission of viruses between species.’ Doctors are now clinically diagnosing patients with ‘climate change” and there are calls from academics to add ‘climate change’ as a cause of death on death certificates. In short, climate change can no longer survive on its own, it needs to be linked with COVID fears to prop it up as a concern.

The climate establishment spent decades trying to scare us about overpopulation, global cooling, the amazon rainforest (allegedly disappearing), and finally, climate change and they utterly failed. A virus came along in 2020 and they realized that this cut across ideologies, cut across political affiliation and they were able to declare an emergency and suspend normal democracy. They were able to achieve their one-party state with an unelected bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, the data does not support this latest speculative computer model COVID/Climate scare story: See: H. Sterling Burnett’s analysis: Science Crushes Claimed Link Between COVID & Climate– ‘In reality, if a modestly warming Earth has any impact on viruses and pandemics, it is to make them less likely and less severe…Historically, we know that the Black Plague arose and ran rampant in Europe and elsewhere during the Little Ice Age.’

Bill Gates warns ‘climate change’ will cause more viruses like COVID-19 – Claims ‘it’s quite clear’ it originated in bats

Bill Gates: “It’s quite clear in this case, [Covid] came across through animals. And almost all our diseases, like HIV, crossed over from chimpanzees in Africa quite some time ago; Ebola came from bats, this also, with one step in between came across from bats.” – “So it’s going to keep happening, particularly with climate change where we’re invading a lot of habitats. And you want to catch it as soon as you can.”

US News & World Report: Climate Change Will Make Pandemics Like COVID More Likely: Report

April 28, 2022, at 8:36 a.m.
U.S. News & World Report

Excerpt: Planet Earth is growing hotter, forcing different animal species to migrate to new areas and interact with other unfamiliar creatures at an increasing rate. That phenomenon could have dire consequences to human health, a new study says, raising the odds for new viral illnesses such HIV (which originated in primates), as well as pandemics such as COVID-19, which many believe originated in a coronavirus that jumped from species such as bats or pangolins to people. Potential new contacts between different species are expected to essentially double over the next 50 years, increasing the risk that other viruses will jump from animal to animal and eventually into humans, researchers predict. Viruses will move to a new animal species at least 15,000 times by 2070 as a result of migration driven by climate change, according to projections published in the journal Nature.

NPR: Climate change may have one more side effect — another pandemic

Excerpt: NPR’s RASCOE: And you and your colleagues built a computer model to project how viral jumps between species might change in a warming world. What type of information did you use to build that model, and what did your results show?

CARLSON: So we’ve been running simulations on and off for about three years. We take huge climate models. We project where animals can go to track their habitats, and then we use machine learning to figure out what animals might be able to share viruses with each other. What we find is that everybody’s on the move. We found that most species are probably going to have at least one chance to pick up new viruses. And at a sort of global scale, this is really concerning news when it comes to human health because it means that species like bats that have coronaviruses, Ebola virus, all of these things we worry about, they’re probably going to need to share some of the same places that we already live. And they’re going to be sharing a ton of viruses in our backyard.

The Atlantic: We Created the ‘Pandemicene’ – By completely rewiring the network of animal viruses, climate change is creating a new age of infectious dangers.

By Ed Yong

Excerpt: For the world’s viruses, this is a time of unprecedented opportunity. An estimated 40,000 viruses lurk in the bodies of mammals, of which a quarter could conceivably infect humans. Most do not, because they have few chances to leap into our bodies. But those chances are growing. Earth’s changing climate is forcing animals to relocate to new habitats, in a bid to track their preferred environmental conditions. Species that have never coexisted will become neighbors, creating thousands of infectious meet-cutes in which viruses can spill over into unfamiliar hosts—and, eventually, into us. Many scientists have argued that climate change will make pandemics more likely, but a groundbreaking new analysis shows that this worrying future is already here, and will be difficult to address.

Forbes: Climate Change Could Spark Future Pandemics, Study Finds

Global warming could fuel future pandemics by dramatically increasing the risk viruses will jump into humans from other animals, researchers warned Thursday, illuminating another hidden and far-reaching cost of the climate crisis.

As the world gets warmer, many animals will be forced to find new places to live, taking any parasites and pathogens they carry along for the ride, researchers wrote in Nature. The researchers examined how climate change could alter the geographic range of some 3,100 mammal species between now and 2070 and how this might affect the transmission of viruses between species.

Even under the most optimistic climate forecasts—less than 2°C warming—the researchers predict climate change will trigger at least 15,000 new instances of viruses crossing between species for the first time by 2070.  The researchers said these “spillover” events will be predominantly driven by bats—which can travel large distances, are likely to carry pathogens capable of infecting humans and are widely believed to be the source of Covid-19—and concentrated in densely populated areas in Asia and Africa. While it’s not clear precisely how the new viruses will affect species involved, Dr. Gregory Albery, one of the study’s lead authors and a disease ecologist at Georgetown University, said it is “likely” many will “fuel the emergency of novel outbreaks in humans.” With human activity driving temperatures upwards, this process could already be well underway, the researchers warned, adding that efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions may not be enough to stave off the increased transmission of viruses between species.

Climate change ‘already’ raising risk of virus spread between mammals

Excerpt: Mammals forced to move to cooler climes amid global warming are “already” spreading their viruses further – with “undoubtable” impacts for human health, a new study says. The research, published in Nature, uses modelling to map how climate change could shift the geographic ranges of 3,100 mammals species and the viruses they carry by 2070. …

The findings suggest that climate change could “easily become the dominant [human] driver” of cross-species virus transmission by 2070, the authors say.

Climate Change To Increase ‘Zoonotic Spillover’ — Yes, That’s Very Bad

Flashback 2020: Harvard School of Public Health links Climate & COVID: ‘The root causes of climate change also increase the risk of pandemics’ – ‘We also need to take climate action to prevent the next pandemic’

Dr. Aaron Bernstein, Director of Harvard Chan C-CHANGE: “We also need to take climate action to prevent the next pandemic.” … “Climate change alters how we relate to other species on Earth and that matters to our health and our risk for infections.” … “Many of the root causes of climate change also increase the risk of pandemics.”

‘Fantastic’ for the climate: Activists See Coronavirus Lockdowns As Dress Rehearsal for ‘Climate Emergency’ – Special Report

‘Fantastic’ for the climate: Activists See Coronavirus Lockdowns As Dress Rehearsal for ‘Climate Emergency’ – Special Report

Update:The ‘Great Reset’: Rule by Unelected ‘Experts’ – COVID-Climate Technocracy has arrived – ‘The danger of letting lab coats run the world’ – Special Report

The climate movement is now merging their focus on linking viruses to “climate change” and thus make fighting climate change a part of fighting deadly viruses.

Former Sec. of State John Kerry on ‘the parallels between the coronavirus and the climate crisis’: “Climate change is a threat multiplier for pandemic diseases, and zoonotic diseases — 70 percent of all human infections — are impacted by climate change and its effect on animal migration and habitats.”

Washington Post’s science reporter claims: ‘Climate change affects everything — even the coronavirus’ – ‘No aspect of life on this planet has been untouched by climate change — viruses included’

Jane Fonda: ‘Climate change guarantees that COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic we will see’ – “The melting of the Arctic ice sheet is releasing untold pathogens to which humans are not immune. Climate change guarantees that COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic we will see.”

The activists will then attempt to piggyback efforts like the Green New Deal as a part of future virus-fighting strategies.

Climate activists: Coronavirus response needs to be ‘a Global Green New Deal’ to ‘decarbonize the global economy as fast as is feasibly possible’

Global warming promoters know that they should never let a crisis go to waste. They are pouncing on any opportunity to inject climate change into the COVID-19 issue including attempts to make sure that federal stimulus bills include going in the “right direction toward decarbonization.”

The expected merging of COVID & Climate: CBS News: Study: Climate change ‘may have played a key role’ in coronavirus pandemic – Claims it may make ‘future pandemics more likely’

Rolling Stone mag: “How Climate Change Is Ushering in a New Pandemic Era”: The author writes, “[a] warming world is expanding the range of deadly diseases and risking an explosion of new zoonotic pathogens from the likes of bats, mosquitoes, and ticks.” The article is long on assertions, touching anecdotes, and personal stories but short on facts and scientific evidence.

Rebuttal: Science Crushes Claimed Link Between COVID & Climate– In reality, if a modestly warming Earth has any impact on viruses and pandemics, it is to make them less likely and less severe…Historically, we know that the Black Plague arose and ran rampant in Europe and elsewhere during the Little Ice Age.

H. Sterling Burnett: Climate alarmists and major media outlets are deceitfully exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to tell the public lies that climate change makes pandemics more likely and severe. In reality, the evidence is quite clear that warmer temperatures make pandemics and underlying outbreaks of viruses like the flu less frequent and severe. In a March 24 editorial in The Hill, Vinod Thomas, former direct-general of the Independent Evaluation Group at the World Bank Group, writes, “There is a link to pandemics, like COVID-19, and a warmer world….” Thomas’s claim follows many others in the media. For example, a recent Time magazine article states, “I have no evidence that climate change triggered this particular virus to jump from animals to humans at this particular time, or that a warmer planet has helped it spread. That said, it’s pretty clear that, broadly speaking, climate change is likely to lead to an uptick in future epidemics caused by viruses and other pathogens.” …

Numerous studies demonstrate that transmissible diseases like the flu and the coronavirus are far more prevalent and deadly during the late-fall, winter, and early spring, when the weather is cold and damp, rather than in the summer months when it is warm and dry. That is a reason the flu season runs from fall through early spring, and then peters out. And colds, while not unheard of, are less common in the summer as well.

Chapter 7 or the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change’s report of Climate Change Reconsidered: Biological Impacts details the results of dozens of peer reviewed studies and reports showing premature deaths from illness and disease are far more prevalent during colder seasons and colder climate eras rather than during warmer seasons and warmer climate eras.

In 2010, British Broadcasting Channel’s health correspondent Clare Murphy analyzed mortality statistics from the UK’s Office of National Statistics from 1950 through 2007 and found, “For every degree the temperature drops below 18C [64 degrees Fahrenheit], deaths in the UK go up by nearly 1.5 percent.”

U.S. Interior Department analyst Indur Goklany studied official U.S. mortality statistics and found similar results. According to official U.S. mortality statistics, an average of 7,200 Americans die each day during the months of December, January, February, and March, compared to 6,400 each day during the rest of the year.

In an article published in the Southern Medical Journal in 2004, W. R. Keatinge and G. C. Donaldson noted, “Cold-related deaths are far more numerous than heat-related deaths in the United States, Europe, and almost all countries outside the tropics, and almost all of them are due to common illnesses that are increased by cold.”

More recently, in a study published in the Lancet in 2015, researchers examined health data from 384 locations in 13 countries, accounting for more than 74 million deaths—a huge sample size from which to draw sound conclusions—and found cold weather, directly or indirectly, killed 1,700% more people than hot weather. No, that is not a typo – 1,700% more people die from cold temperatures than warm or hot temperatures.

Contrary to the fear-mongering assertions in The Hill and Time, the overwhelming scientific evidence shows it is cold, not heat, that kills. Therefore, a modestly warmer world, with shorter, less severe winters, should result in fewer premature deaths from disease, viruses, pandemics, hunger, and other natural causes.

2021: Epic Fail: Chuck Todd Tries to Bait Anthony Fauci on Climate Change

BBC: How much does human breathing contribute to climate change?

BBC Excerpt: In one day, the average person breathes out around 500 litres of the greenhouse gas CO2 – which amounts to around 1kg in mass. This doesn’t sound much until you take into account the fact that the world’s population is around 6.8 billion, collectively breathing out around 2500 million tonnes of the stuff each year – which is around 7 per cent of the annual CO2 tonnage churned out by the burning of fossil fuel around the world.

So, on the face of it, we humans are a significant contributor to global warming. But, in reality, the CO2 we’re breathing out is part of a natural cycle, by which our bodies convert carbohydrates from CO2-absorbing plants into energy, plus water and CO2. As such, we’re not adding any extra CO2.

2021: B.C. doctor clinically diagnoses patient as suffering from ‘climate change’ – ‘Picked up his patient’s chart & penned in the words ‘climate change’

2020: Calls to add ‘climate change’ to death certificates – New study demands ‘climate change’ be added as ‘pre-existing condition’

When all else fails, use kids to advance your propaganda:

2021 Study: ‘Climate change makes children vulnerable to infectious diseases’ – Can the Green New Deal save the children!?

Media Push Unfounded Claim That ‘Climate Change’ Exacerbating Spread Of Diseases

14 Signs of Totalitarianism

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Some of these techniques are playing out before our eyes.

We all know the cons of Twitter, but one of the pros is discovering new and interesting people.

One of my favorite new follows is Benjamin Carlson, a public relations guru and former editor at The Atlantic. Carlson’s tweets are among the best you’ll find on Twitter, and he clearly has a keen understanding of the intersections between media and government, power and propaganda (both current and historically).

One of his recent tweets caught my eye, and I share an adaptation of it below.

  1. Dissent is equated to violence
  2. Media is controlled
  3. The legal system is co-opted by the state
  4. Power is exerted to quash dissent
  5. State police protect the regime, not the people
  6. Rights—financial, legal, and civil—are contingent on compliance
  7. Mass conformity of beliefs and behaviors is demanded
  8. Power is concentrated in inner ring of elite institutions and people
  9. Semi-organized violence is permitted (in some cases)
  10. Propaganda targets enemies of the state regime
  11. Entire classes singled out for persecution
  12. Extra-legal actions are condoned against internal regime opponents
  13. Harsh legal enforcement against unfavored classes
  14. Private and public levers of power are used to enforce adherence to state dogmas

The list is a bit troubling. At the very least, some of these techniques are playing out before our eyes. This is certainly not to say that the US is a totalitarian state, however.

There are many definitions of totalitarianism, and I don’t believe one can seriously argue that the United States has arrived there. But authoritarianism is certainly in the air, and it emanates most strongly from our nation’s capital.

While both the political Right and the political Left accuse each other of harboring tyrannical ambitions, the philosopher Karl Popper offered a clue as to when a legitimate government crosses the line and becomes a tyrannical one.

“You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government,” Popper wrote. “I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence ‘democracy,’ and the other ‘tyranny.’”

Popper’s quote is an important reminder: the people ultimately have the right to choose their government. In his seminal Two Treatises of Government, John Locke carved out what would become the foundation of America’s founding philosophy, as FEE’s Dan Sanchez recently explained.

Equality, in the original sense, not of equal abilities or equal wealth, but of non-subjugation;

Inalienable Rights, not to government entitlements, but to life, liberty, and property;

Democracy, in the original sense, not of mere majoritarian voting, but of popular sovereignty: the idea that governments should not be masters, but servants of the people;

Consent of the Governed: the idea that governments can only legitimately govern by the consent of the governed, i.e., the sovereign people;

Limited Government: the idea that the sole purpose and proper scope of legitimate government is only to secure the rights of the people;

Right of Revolution: the idea that any government that oversteps its limits and tramples the very rights it was charged with securing is a tyranny, and that the people have a right to resist, alter, and even abolish tyrannical governments.

As the state drifts further and further from its moral purpose, it becomes more and more important to understand the rights of man and the limits of government.

A version of this article appeared on the author’s Substack.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

RELATED ARTICLE: Marxism Remains Relevant Only as a Destructive Force

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Get Trump

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This is still America, not Stalinist Russia, which means people who try to persecute their political enemies will eventually get their comeuppance.  The fifth Twitter file release showed Twitter employees demanded former President Trump be banned from the platform even though the team assigned to evaluate his tweets didn’t believe he had violated any policies.   Yesterday, Elon Musk disbanded the group of outside advisors formed to moderate content on the platform.

I have every faith that our corrupt Justice Department and FBI will eventually get their comeuppance, too.  Lying to the FISA court to get Trump, really?  They’re still after Trump, now with a special counsel assigned to investigate efforts by Trump and some of his supporters to contest the results of the 2020 election.  The inquiry has all the hallmarks of a partisan witch hunt.  The counsel’s name is Jack Smith and his mother-in-law was a George Soros senior fellow at the Soros-funded Open Society Foundation.  It is not disputed George Soros is a far-left operative who has funded all manner of chaos and disruption in recent years, including the many Soros-funded progressive prosecutors across the country who refuse to follow the law.

Jack Smith’s wife is a high-dollar donor to Joe Biden’s campaign and other Democrat-related causes, like Rashida Tlaib.  The wife also produced a fawning documentary on Michelle Obama – her life, hopes, and book tour – a documentary Michelle Obama said she was excited about.

When Jack Smith was chief of the Public Integrity Section at the Justice Department, he arranged a meeting with Lois Lerner at the IRS to discuss how they could charge Tea Parties and other groups on the Right with conspiracy to violate U.S. laws.  Lois Lerner, you might recall, spearheaded the effort to block conservative nonprofits and criminalize political dissent.  Who better than Jack Smith to head up current efforts to persecute the Biden administration’s political enemies?  In appointing Smith as special counsel, Attorney General Merrick Garland made a point of saying Donald Trump had just declared his candidacy for the 2024 election.

This is the same Justice Department that issued a subpoena for five years of records from a conservative group in Alabama that opposes sex-change treatments for minors.  The same Justice Department who intervened to get a light sentence of little more than a year for the left-wing terrorist lawyer who firebombed a police car in New York during a riot when sentencing guidelines called for ten years imprisonment.  Reward your friends, punish your enemies.  The Justice Department’s FBI is busy purging conservative agents from its ranks.

The desire to persecute political enemies extends beyond the old Twitter and the Justice Department, reaching into other corners of Democrat World.  In September, it was reported the U.S. Postal Service was monitoring social media posts to gather intelligence about any plans to protest against Joe Biden.  This is the same Postal Service whose unions endorsed Biden in the 2020 election and actually helped Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2016.  Speaking of social media, Facebook has been spying on private messages and reporting people who question the legitimacy of the 2020 election to the FBI.  The FBI used the information to try to gin up more phony domestic terrorism cases against people on the Right, but it didn’t work and ended up being a waste of time.

Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island wrote to the IRS insisting they use their 87,000 new IRS agents to investigate conservative groups and revoke their tax exemptions.  In the correspondence, Whitehouse only mentioned groups on the Right, his political enemies, not the abundance of dark money groups and documented tax exemption abusers on the Left.

The open persecution of political enemies indicates the authoritarian Left thinks it has won and only needs to mop up.  But I’m sitting here looking at former Twitter executives getting exposed daily and a robust media ecosphere on the Right that reported all the stories I told you about today.  So, to the Left I say, you are completely delusional.  You’re not even close to winning.  Not only that, you are going to get exactly what you deserve for trying to silence people like me and criminalize the actions of people who oppose you.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

RELATED ARTICLE: As Extent of Twitter Censorship Is Unearthed, Public Outcry Swells

GERMANY: Molecular Biologist Unveils Concept of World’s First Artificial Womb Facility Which Can Incubate up to 30,000 Lab-Grown Babies a Year

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From a world that wants abortion, what are they up to?

“Lab-grown babies.” Cloning?

Cloning? The Matrix 2022?

German Molecular Biologist Unveils Concept of World’s First Artificial Womb Facility Which Can Incubate up to 30,000 Lab-Grown Babies a Year (VIDEO)

By Jim Hof,: TPG, December 12, 2022:

On Friday, a German molecular biologist by trade unveiled a new concept for the world’s first artificial womb facility, EctoLife, which could incubate up to 30,000 babies a year.

“My new concept will be unveiled early December, something that I have been working on for a while,” said Hashem Al-Ghaili in November. “The new concept relies on over 50 years of groundbreaking scientific research.”

Hashem Al-Ghaili is a molecular biologist, producer, filmmaker, and science communicator based in Berlin, Germany.

EctoLife, which operates solely on renewable energy, enables infertile couples to conceive and become the biological parents of their own offspring.

“It’s a perfect solution for women who had their uterus surgically removed due to cancer or other complications. With EctoLife, premature births and C-sections will be a thing of the past. EctoLife is designed to help countries that are suffering from severe population decline, including Japan, Bulgaria, South Korea, and many others,” according to its press release.

“According to the World Health Organization, around 300,000 women die from pregnancy complications. EctoLife artificial womb is designed to alleviate human suffering and reduce the chances of C-sections,” Hashem wrote.

Warning: Graphic Content!

According to the World Health Organization, around 300,000 women die from pregnancy complications. EctoLife artificial womb is designed to alleviate human suffering and reduce the chances of C-sections.

— Hashem Al-Ghaili (@HashemGhaili) December 9, 2022

In an interview with Science and Stuff, Al-Ghaili revealed that he believes the EctoLife concept would replace natural birth in the future.

A total of 75 fully functional laboratories can be found within the building, according to the press release. Up to four hundred artificial wombs, or “growth pods,” can be housed in each cutting-edge laboratory. Every pod is made to be just like the conditions inside the mother’s uterus.

Keep reading……

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Twitter Still Has MANY Ex-FBI/CIA Agents in High Ranking Positions

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“Why, after Trump was elected, did Twitter hire over a dozen ex FBI/CIA agents and place them in Senior Management roles?”

It gets more sinister by the day. We thought we knew, we knew nothing.

Read this thread:

Elon Musk, Your new company @Twitter has many ex FBI/CIA agents in high ranks. Should probably do a little housecleaning.

  1. Kevin Michelena – current Twitter Sr. Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI Intelligence Analyst 12 years
  2. Doug Hunt – current Twitter Senior Director. Ex FBI Special Agent 20 years.
  3. Mark Jaroszewski – current Twitter Director Corporate Security/Risk. Ex FBI 20 years
  4. Douglas Turner – current Twitter Senior Manager, Corporate and Executive Security Services. Ex FBI 14 years. Ex Secret Service 7 years.
  5. Patrick G. – current Twitter Head of Corporate Security. Ex FBI Special Agent 23 years.
  6. Karen Walsh – current Twitter Director – Corporate Resilience. Ex FBI Special Agent 21 years 
  7. Russell Handorf – current Twitter Senior Staff Technical Program Manager. Ex FBI 10 years.
  8. Michael B. – current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI 23 years.
  9. Vincent Lucero – current Twitter Senior Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 22 years.
  10. Kevin L. – current Twitter Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 25 years.
  11. Matthew W. – current Twitter Senior Director of Product Trust, Revenue Policy, and Counsel Systems & Analytics. Ex FBI 15 years.
  12. Claire O. – current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI 8 years.
  13. Bruce A. – current Twitter Director, Corporate Security. Ex FBI 23 years.
  14. Jeff Carlton – current Twitter Senior Manager. Ex FBI & CIA
    Intelligence Analyst 3 years.

What do all of these Twitter employees have in common? They were ALL hired since @realDonaldTrump was elected.

Why, after Trump was elected, did Twitter hire over a dozen ex FBI/CIA agents and place them in Senior Management roles? 

@elonmusk – how many “Jim Bakers” are imbedded in Twitter, possibly working against you? or…..”watching” you. I’d advise you to do some investigating and clean house. 

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

How Migrants Make The Economies They Move To A Lot Like The Ones They Left

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Ponder the implications of this for mass Muslim migration into Europe. And those implications are by no means solely economic.

Coming to America: REVIEW: ‘The Culture Transplant’ by Garett Jones

by Charles Fain Lehman, Washington Free Beacon, December 11, 2022:

Imagine that you are a U.S. immigration officer, handing out green cards to the would-be Americans of the world. You have before you two applicants who look almost completely the same; for some arcane, unspecified bureaucratic reason, you can only approve one of them. They’re both well-educated by American standards, both bringing identical families, both passed their background checks.

The major difference is their nation of origin. One is from a nation with a strong tradition of rule of law, free markets, and democratic pluralism. The other is from a country where kleptocracy, autocracy, and socialism are standard. The difference, in other words, is the character of the society that your two would-be immigrants come from. The question is: Should this difference matter?

The basic argument of The Culture Transplant, the new book from George Mason University professor Garett Jones, is that at least in the aggregate, the answer to this question is “yes.” The marginal immigrant, to be sure, may not matter. But Jones shows, through an engaging and digestible tour of the academic literature, that people bring their national character with them when they migrate; that those values persist for up to several generations; and that some values really are better for societal flourishing than others, so the values immigrants bring matters a great deal.

To reach this conclusion, Jones relies on a fairly diverse set of evidence. Much of the basis for his argument, though, is drawn from the so-called deep-roots literature. That research, in essence, looks at what today’s countries were like 500 to 2,500 years ago, in terms of level of governance, agricultural development, and technological development. It observes that what a country was like hundreds of years ago is a strong predictor of how developed it is today. More to Jones’s point, it observes that what a country’s people were like hundreds of years ago predicts what they are like today.

The point here is that, for whatever reason, certain fundamental facts about a civilization—i.e., its level of development—are both highly relevant to its performance on the centuries timespan and transplantable from one place to another. One plausible explanation is that whatever determines this outcome inheres in the people from those civilizations, who carry it with them and “transplant” it wherever they migrate.

Indeed, Jones reviews extensive research that shows immigrants often look more like their ancestors than the countries they arrive to, even several generations after arrival. If your ancestors believed in things conducive to development—social trust, cooperation, fairness, etc.—then you probably do too. And those beliefs matter for how the country you now live in does.

What are the concrete implications of this view? Jones offers two. One is that the countries with the highest rates of innovation—China, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States—should be extremely cautious about changing the population composition through migration. These countries produce the overwhelming majority of the world’s progress, and if progress is a function of your country’s composition, then we should care a lot about keeping their current mix, because otherwise all of humanity loses out….

Read more.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.