Government, Religion, Politics and Culture: November 2021

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Three Jabs And.... - by Karl Denninger

.... you're dead?

Maybe.

But three strikes and you're out has been the rule for a very long time. So how many strikes do we have here?

Let's cut the crap, shall we? The mask mandates were known worthless by the people promoting them with alleged "science." They knew they were lying. The purpose of the mask mandates, all of which post-dated "warp speed" pre-purchases of an unproved technology that had never been successfully used before in man or beast was to do one and only one thing: Provide a basis of compliance and see if you'd eat the spouses and families of the mandating parties before issuing the REAL mandate.

After all, while wearing a mask was stupid and ineffective if it harmed that harm was modest to moderate in scope. Worn for a long period of time or with inadequate protocol, which was a certainty in untrained persons within the general population who do not have access to other people's money to pay for the required interval changes of said masks or biological waste disposal associated with proper protocol, the physical harm was mostly limited to taking a virus from one place (e.g. outdoors or in one business) and likely bringing it into another, or serving as a bacterial incubator which was most-likely to screw the wearing party -- and rather unlikely to screw anyone else. As we knew was the case in operating rooms as of 1981, forty years ago, wearing oral/nasal protection less-effective than an N95 is, at best, performative art.

Further, if you decided to tell your governor, mayor or other wagging-finger jackwad to stuff it up their ass (in other words, you knew how to read and bothered to look up the science on this for yourself) the damage accumulation, such as it was, ended when you took the mask off.

A shot, on the other hand, is designed to irrevocably change your metabolic profile -- whether for good or bad. The intent was always to force compliance all the way back to the beginning while at the same time actively and intentionally concealing possible adverse effects. It could never be any other way since there is no way to obtain adverse event risk data for something that frequently does not occur for months or years down the road without the passage of said time.

Trump and HHS Secretary Ash knew damn well this was the case -- as does Biden's cabinet. Biden, himself, may not even know that he just **** his own pants, but irrespective of that as the guy in the left seat he is still responsible when the plane crashes.

There are times that such a trade-off is probably worth it even with all these unknowns. In those cases an honest discussion with the public ought to be sufficient to convince people, and for those whom it is not, well, they choose and they accept the consequences.

But Covid-19, a virus with a similar profile of mortality and morbidity to Chicken Pox, was definitely never in that category and any claim otherwise is a damned lie. We knew within a couple of months that a third or more of the deaths were happening in nursing homes where less than 1% of the population resides; outside of that group risk, while present, was small and certainly not worthy of fear. Covid-19 is a beta coronavirus and two others circulate in society all the time. One of those two almost-certainly caused a pandemic in the 1890s and today it is still here, mostly causing colds and flus.

In other words there was never any reason to believe Covid-19 would be any different either originally or down the road. Within a couple of months -- by May 1st of 2020 -- we knew this conclusively. In fact all we could do was make it worse by doing stupid things.

Even today, roughly two years into this virus, we cannot characterize with accuracy who is going to get butt-rammed and who is not by this virus. There are myriad examples of elderly spousal pairs with roughly-equal morbid factors, all the way back to Diamond Princess, where one partner was killed and the other didn't even sneeze, making clear that there are risk factors we cannot accurately quantify. We have decent statistical probability adjustments which make clear that healthy children are at a statistical zero risk of being seriously harmed or killed while obese, diabetic adults are at much higher risk -- perhaps 1,000 times as much risk. But irrespective of said risk factors one can always draw the short straw and get hosed -- or laugh right into the face of a spewed viral cloud despite weighing 400lbs and having a blood sugar level over 200 and get away with it.

To put numbers on this related to those under 18 roughly five times as many children die every year from drowning as would die if every single kid under the age of 18 got Covid-19. Some ten to twenty times as many children die every year in car accidents and yet unlike the risk of a car crash the risk to a child occurs once after which they obtain durable immune protection against critical or fatal outcomes in the future. There is not now and never was any argument for trying to "shield" healthy children from this virus, whether by vaccination or otherwise. Indeed such an act is intentional, malicious harm since we know factually that infection produces lasting immune protection from severe and fatal outcomes down the road while vaccination does not. You're crazy to do anything that might interfere with your child acquiring said protection since down the road they may choose to get fat and diabetic and if they do having that protection via prior infection is the only thing that has a high probability of keeping them from becoming DEAD!

In my opinion anyone advocating for or attempting to "mandate" such a "vaccine" in healthy children is a murderous piece of ****. Intentionally placing children at risk of death where no statistical benefit will accrue to them, as all children have neither the knowledge or capacity, whether mental or physical, to say "No" and enforce it, is exactly the sort of monstrous behavior that someone who forcibly rapes a child engages in and all such persons deserve the same punishment.

As for adults it's a different story.

Competent adults have the right to choose to do dangerous things and calibrate their own risk and reward. For many years I chose to do intentional decompression diving, including in caves, which has a significant risk of death. Indeed out of a couple of thousand people in the US who engage in this form of recreational activity several die every year, so the risk is much higher than that of car accidents -- or Covid-19. In virtually every case when it happens the final analysis reads "death by stupidity", but dead is dead. My daughter likes to climb things that nature has caused to stick way up out of the ground; for obvious reasons stupidity in that particular sport comes with a high risk of death as well. I know several people who, in my opinion, drink too much. I've known a few who have killed themselves doing so, including a member of my immediate family. Several friends and family members, including a few who are deceased, smoke despite the well-known risks from doing so. Engaging in certain sexual practices common to gay men is dangerous as well. Being an adult comes with the right to make choices that one believes they will get some benefit from, whether concrete or not, and face the consequences on an individual basis of having done so. I had no right to interfere with those who drank themselves to death and I have no right to interfere with those who consume too much booze now, just as I do not have the right to interfere with someone's decision to smoke tobacco or use some other recreational drug. I can note that doing such a thing is dangerous and might lead to a bad outcome, including death, but that's all, and once I've noted it if I don't shut up I'm a nag, not a friend. The same is true here; if you believe the vaccines are safe and effective have at it but I don't want to hear the crying if and when the roll comes up "1" because we had every reason to believe it damn well might and for a huge percentage of the people, a percentage that has radically increased over the last year as we have learned more, the risk-benefit equation for saying "yes" was dubious at best. In healthy children that ratio was never justified and it has only gotten worse over time.

But if you were coerced then the person or persons who did it, which means your employer or officials at your school by the way, has earned exactly the same sentence as those who jab children at no statistical risk or sexually assault them. Whether they'll ever get that just penalty and whether you use the guillotine on their neck or bank account depends on you.

Understand that the latest screamfest over the new "variant" is due to four people in Botswana, all vaccinated, who got..... a cold. That's right -- none of them are in the hospital, none of them are in an ICU, none are on vents and zero died. The same "variant" has been detected all over the place already, including in Israel and other nations, all of which previously required full vaccination to enter their countries so the premise that we could stop it from getting in by requiring vaccination by travelers is now proved on a conclusive basis to be false.

Any further insistence on vaccination to travel and otherwise enjoy ordinary life is now a damned lie proved to be of no value whatsoever to public health as the very thing we were told would not happen if people took the shots in fact did happen in a fully-vaccinated group of people. Even if the new "variant" turns out to be wildly dangerous to vaccinated people or intentionally released and targeted at them it doesn't matter; the attempted means of stopping spread of the virus, vaccine mandates and travel restrictions for those who did not get the shots, is a proved failure.

Therefore any politician further advancing or trying to "enforce" such a thing gets to join the child rapists in terms of what they deserve as they are now trying to mandate you do a dangerous thing when the alleged social benefit they claim for it has been conclusively disproved.

Let me restate this in plain English for the idiots who have trouble with logic: Any "mandate" to take a jab is, as now proved by events, a demand that you play Russian Roulette -- a game of chance with no benefit that can and does sometimes kill you without warning.

I have the right to play Russian Roulette of my own free will and if I do, and it ends badly, that's on me. If I'm polite I'll do it outside so its easier to clean up the mess.

But a mandate to play Russian Roulette is in fact an act of felony assault with intent to commit murder and that justifies the immediate use of whatever force is necessary to stop it by the person being coerced.

Again, I have no quarrel with people who choose the danger -- which ever way that goes (infection, prophylaxis or vaccination) for them in their own exclusive evaluation. But any so-called "public health" argument -- that you somehow "benefit others" -- has long been extinguished by the wildly-insane commonality of vaccine failures and now, with this latest, a failure in a 100% vaccinated cohort to prevent the spread of a new variant all over the world.

Leaving aside that actual vaccines (of which these jabs are not) are and should always be about personal benefit and nothing more, evaluated on the basis of ones personal risk and health status, in this specific case the jabs have been proved to not prevent acquiring or transmitting the disease in question and thus, from a standpoint of societal benefit do nothing.

Case closed.

PS: The narrative is collapsing and so is the willingness to put up with the bull****. Notice the hospitals who have been forced to close ERs due to firing jab-refusing nurses? What happens when you have a heart attack and the ER is closed? The chorus of medical folks who have had enough with the lies is also becoming louder by the day and that which was previously unknown when it comes to the risk of these jabs has without exception come up on the wrong side of the ledger. We now have formal published medical studies showing durable harm from the jabs and the number of physicians and others speaking out on this is rising.

In addition both the 6th Circuit (which is hearing the OSHA mandate case and has not, thus far, dissolved the 5th Circuit's stay) and now the CMS Mandate, which hit health care workers, has been hit with a preliminary injunction -- which puts any medical center that fired people up to now for refusing in a very difficult spot with potential civil and, if discovery proves collusive action between medical centers then extortion is on the table which is a predicate to civil and criminal racketeering. If you think the Biden administration doesn't at least suspect they're ****ed at this point you're dumber than you look. This, by the way, means those who "implemented" such things ahead of the government are utterly and completely ****ed. As in "you have a purdy house and it will soon be mine" level ****ed -- or worse.

What's even better is that by delaying the mandate dates to after the New Year Biden's Administration has admitted that there is no "emergency." You don't let half the town burn to the ground by sitting on your ass for yet another month, right into the maw of cold and flu season, if there is an emergency with a respiratory virus. Never mind CMS, OSHA and all the other organs of government who sat on the issue for months. If you think the 6th Circuit won't take note of all that -- oh yes they will, and there goes the government claims. And your employer's, by the way.

As I predicted I fully expect this pattern to continue and indeed accelerate as we go through the next few months and once it reaches critical mass there will be no stopping it. If you're are and have been on the wrong side of this debate with regard to mandates and screaming as I have predicted for more than a year your time is about to expire and when it does all that will remain is whether you are ignored as lunatics for the rest of your life or whether the people decide that those 500,000 extra dead bodies that occurred solely due to your actions, along with all the mandated jab-related injuries, demand accountability and it will be you that sates said fury, like it or not.

Choose wisely Karen as its quite clear you are going to lose; the option to sue for peace and make penance may well have a time limit beyond which your apology and offer of restitution will not be accepted.

I for one look forward to that day for you deserve it.

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=244371

Of Two Minds - Why Inflation Is a Runaway Freight Train

The value of these super-abundant follies will trend rapidly to zero once margin calls and other bits of reality drastically reduce demand.

Inflation, deflation, stagflation--they've all got proponents. But who's going to be right? The difficulty here is that supply and demand are dynamic and so there are always things going up in price that haven't changed materially (and are therefore not worth the higher cost) and other things dropping in price even though they haven't changed materially.

So proponents of inflation and deflation can always offer examples supporting their case. The stagflationist camp is delighted to offer a compromise case: yes, there are both deflationary and inflationary dynamics, and what we have is the worst of both worlds: stagnant growth and declining purchasing power.

What's missing in most of these debates is a comparison of scale: deflationists point to things like big-screen TV prices dropping. OK, fine: we save $300 on a TV that we might buy once every two or three years. So we save $100 a year thanks to this deflation.

Meanwhile, on the inflationary side, healthcare insurance went up $3,000 a year, childcare went up $3,000 a year, rent (or property taxes) went up $3,000 a year and care for an elderly parent went up $3,000 a year: that's $12,000. Now how many big-screen TVs, shoddy jeans, etc. that dropped a bit in price will we have to buy to offset $12,000 in higher costs?

This is the problem with abstractions like statistics: TVs dropped 20% in cost, while healthcare, childcare, assisted living and rent all went up 20%--so these all balance out, right?

There are two glaring omissions in all the back-and-forth on inflation and deflation:

1. Price is set on the margins.

2. Enterprises cannot lose money for very long and so they close down.

Let's start with an observation about the dynamics of price/cost: supply and demand. As a general rule, things that are scarce and in high demand will go up in price, and things that are abundant and in low demand will drop in price.

Whatever is chronically scarce and necessary for life will have a ceaseless pressure to cost more, whatever is abundant and no longer desirable will have a ceaseless pressure to cost less.

Now we come to the overlooked mechanism #1: Price is set on the margins. Housing offers an example: take a neighborhood of 100 homes. The five sales last year were all around $600,000, and so appraisers set the value of the other 95 homes at $600,000.

Things change and the next sale is at $450,000. This is dismissed as an outlier, but then the next two sales are also well below $500,000. By the fifth sale at $450,000, the value of each of the 95 homes that did not change hands has been reset to $450,000. The five houses that traded hands set the price of the 95 houses that didn't change hands. Price is set on the margins.

The biggest expense in many enterprises and agencies is labor. Those who own enterprises know that it's not just the wage being paid that matters, it's the labor overhead: the benefits, insurance and taxes paid on every employee. These are often 50% or more of the wages being paid. These labor overhead expenses have skyrocketed for many enterprises and agencies, increasing their labor costs in ways that are hidden from the employees and public.

It's important to recall that roughly 3/4 of all local government expenses are for labor and labor overhead--healthcare, pensions, etc. Where do you think local taxes are heading as labor and labor-overhead costs rise? What happens to pension funds when all the speculative bubbles all pop?

The cost of labor is also set on the margins. The wage of the 100-person workforce is set by the five most recent hires, and if wages went up 20% to secure those employees, the cost of the labor of the other 95 workers also went up 20%. (Employers can hide a mismatch but not for long, and such deception will alienate the 95% who are getting paid less for doing the same work.)

Labor is scarce for fundamental reasons that aren't going away:

1. Demographics: large generation is retiring, replacements are not guaranteed.

2. Catch-up: labor's share of the economy has declined for 45 years. Now it's catch-up time.

3. Cultural shift in values: Antiwork, slow living, FIRE--all are manifestations of a profound cultural shift away from working for decades to pay debts and enrich billionaires to downshifting expenses and expectations in favor of leisure and agency (control of one's work and life).

4. Long Covid and other chronic health issues: whether anyone cares to admit it or not, Long Covid is real and poorly tracked. A host of other chronic health issues resulting from overwork, stress and unhealthy lifestyles are also poorly tracked. All these reduce the supply of labor.

5. Competing demands of family and work. Work has won for 45 years, now family is pushing back.

Put these together--diminishing supply of labor and labor being priced on the margins--and you get a runaway freight train of higher labor costs. Add in runaway increases in labor overhead and you've got a runaway freight train with the throttle jammed to 11.

Deflationists make one fatally unrealistic assumption: that enterprises facing sharply higher costs for labor, components, shipping, taxes, etc. will continue making big-screen TVs, shoddy jeans, etc. even as the price the products and services fetch plummets below the costs of producing them.

The wholesale price of the TV can't drop below production and shipping costs for very long. Then the manufacturers close down production and the over-abundance of TVs, etc. goes away. Nation-states can subsidize production of some things for a time, but selling at a loss is not a long-term winning strategy: subsidizing failing enterprises and money-losing state-owned companies is a form of malinvestment that bleeds the economy dry.

The only thing that will still be super-abundant as demand plummets is phantom-wealth "investments", i.e. skims, scams, bubbles and frauds. The value of these super-abundant follies will trend rapidly to zero once margin calls and other bits of reality drastically reduce demand.

Real-world costs: much higher. Speculative gambles: much lower. As in zero.

Thank you, everyone who dropped a hard-earned coin in my begging bowl this week--you bolster my hope and refuel my spirits.

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

https://www.oftwominds.com/blognov21/runaway-inflation11-21.html?fullweb=1

Biden Just Announced Date for WWIII - By Finian Cunningham

November 28, 202: Information Clearing House - The Biden administration this week brazenly announced its intention to walk over China’s red line warning on Taiwan. The move by the US is a recklessly provocative step that dares an inevitable military response from Beijing.

If that happens then all bets are off for a full-scale military confrontation between the United States, its allies, and China. It is not alarmist to say such a clash would escalate into World War III.

Australia and Britain are explicitly committed to a military alliance with the United States in the Asia-Pacific through the recently formed AUKUS pact. Russia will be obliged to defend China.

The date in question is December 9-10 when the Biden administration plays host to a so-called “Summit of Democracies”. This week the State Department announced a list of “participants” that include 110 countries. China and Russia are not invited, among other excluded nations.

Most provocatively, the separatist Chinese territory of Taiwan is invited to attend the video conference. The US is careful to refer to Taiwan as a “participant” not as a “nation”. Nevertheless, this semantical device aside, the invitation is a blatant violation of China’s sovereign claim of authority over Taiwan.

China’s claim to Taiwan as being a part of its integral territory is recognized by the United Nations and, at least in theory, by the United States with its One China Policy since 1979.

The island of Taiwan has existed as a self-governing territory since China’s civil war ended in 1949 with communist victory. The nationalist opponents fled to Taiwan. China retains the right to reunite Taiwan under governance from the mainland. Beijing has warned it will do so by military force if Taiwan ever declares independence.

Washington maintains a position of “strategic ambiguity” whereby it acknowledges a One China Policy while also simultaneously offering US commitments to help Taiwan with military defence.

Since Joe Biden took the White House in January, his administration has taken this ambiguity to dangerous levels. At one point, Biden has overstepped policy by explicitly stating the US would defend Taiwan in the event of a confrontation with China.

At a teleconference summit on November 16, China’s President Xi Jinping admonished US policy on Taiwan as “playing with fire”. Xi drew a red line that Washington must desist from inciting separatist ambitions of the Taiwanese government.

The announcement this week of the “Summit of Democracies” and specifically the invitation of Taiwan while excluding China is about as bold as it can get by the Biden administration in undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. That it comes only days after a verbal commitment from Biden to Xi that the US adheres to One China Policy and is not seeking Taiwan’s independence makes the provocation all the more contemptuous.

Biden’s ratcheting up of tensions with China is not out of the blue. For more than a decade, successive administrations under Obama, Trump and now Biden have been targeting Beijing as its top national security threat. Washington continually accuses China of aggression in the Asia-Pacific which is an inversion of reality. Taiwan has become a spearhead for Washington to antagonize China with. Under this administration, arms sales to Taiwan have increased as well as US naval and air force maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait under the cynical pretext of “freedom of navigation operations”.

President Biden has made “democracy versus authoritarianism” a theme of his White House. Calling a summit of 110 participating countries for the summit on December 9-10 is an arrogant attempt to demarcate the world into a false dichotomy whereby presumed virtuous nations are under the benign leadership of the United States.

China has slammed the summit as an artificial polarization of nations into so-called allies and enemies in what is a throwback to the Cold War decades. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said this divisive manipulation of international relations is simply a ploy by the United States to exert its hegemonic ambitions.

China says it is not up to the United States to define what is democracy and what is not. Beijing asserts that “democracy belongs to all humanity”. It’s not just about holding cycles of elections. In the case of the United States, its “democracy” is dominated by two parties bankrolled by Wall Street capitalists and plutocrats. Its record on poverty, inequality, racism and warmongering is plentiful to roundly negate pretentious claims of “democracy”.

In any case, back in August when the Biden administration first announced its plans for a “democracy summit” Beijing warned Washington not to use the forum to incite Taiwanese tensions. If the US persisted, China said it would order military planes and warships to Taiwan.

There is an unmistakable sense that China has had it with US provocations. The mainland has been making military preparations for a showdown over Taiwan. This insane move by Washington to call a “summit of democracies” – how bitterly ironic – could well be the final act of American treachery. War is on the cards and we just got a date.

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56890.htm

Why are Police Officers Refusing the Vax? - By Michael A. Letts

The federal vaccine mandate is sparking legal action by police in cities across the country. But why are the police choosing not to get vaccinated -- and why are their unions protecting that choice?

Chicago is the perfect place to examine this issue.

Under a directive by Chicago’s mayor, every city employee had until Oct. 15 to report their vaccination status or choose to undergo regular COVID-19 testing instead. Then police unions legally challenged the mandate and a judge suspended the date for members of the force to be fully vaccinated, offering that the case needed to go through arbitration. Other unions representing city workers are also now seeking the same type of ruling.

So far, more than 73 Chicago police employees and 67 Chicago Fire Department staffers have been placed on no-pay status since the Oct. 15 deadline has passed. They were also sent home for refusing to report their vaccination status. However, many later complied, and now only 35 police and 26 Fire Department workers were on no-pay status.

So what is the reason that cops are saying no to the jab in Chicago and other cities?

The same reason everyone else is: they question the efficacy of the jab and believe that public health officials and other government officials have simply gone too far. “My body; my choice” has become a semi-ironic rallying cry among those who want to retain their medical freedom -- whether its police officers or employees of small and large businesses facing mandates.

One Chicago police lieutenant who spoke to the Chicago Tribune under the condition of anonymity said: “I would sooner resign than be forced to get the vaccine.”

“Last year, when the riots were going on and the city’s burning, they were putting us 50 people deep on a CTA bus and driving us around,” he continued. “They made us work 12-hour days for 40 days straight, with no days off. That’s our job. That’s what we did. And people are now forgetting about that.”

What’s happening in Chicago is happening everywhere. It's unclear how many police unions across the nation are fighting vaccine mandates. But unions from Seattle to New York have all pushed back against mandatory vaccines. Some of the unionized firefighters nationwide have also resisted vaccines or the reporting of vaccine status per the federal mandate.

And why do these officers have the support of their labor organizations?

Police union leaders say it’s their job to protect its members -- whether it’s one or several hundred. Mike Solan, president of the officers' union in Seattle, told CNN: "It's about the mandate in and of itself is a problem and they need to bargain this. Jobs are on the line. That's our purpose as a union."

Since Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s directive went into effect, 84% of Chicago police have reported their vaccination status on the city’s official portal. The anonymous lieutenant is among the 23% of who reported they are not fully vaccinated.

Officers who have already had COVID say they want to rely on their natural immunity against the infection. But relying on natural immunity has been condemned by local and national officials even though there’s good reason to believe it’s an effective protection against reinfection. Studies out of Israel show that natural immunity in unvaccinated people who contract COVID-19 is up to 13 times stronger than what is produced by the so-called vaccine. Other research shows similar findings.

We entrust police with our lives and safety. Doesn’t it then follow that they will be just as careful with their own lives? Shouldn’t they, like everyone else, have a chance to review the medical data and make decisions about their own health in private without outside interference?

If a police officer or anyone else chooses to be vaccinated against COVID-19, that is his prerogative. It is a choice that needs to be made between him and his doctor. It is not a decision the government should decide for them.

Between the Defund the Police movements, vaccine mandates, and liberal laws restricting them, it almost seems like an intentional effort to paint bullseyes on the backs of police officers, daring anyone to take a shot at them. With fewer police officers on the job, when those left are called into high crime areas, are they at least issued bulletproof vests?

Moreover, people’s livelihoods are being stripped away from them, further adding to America’s worker shortage while endangering the lives of the citizens by taking police off the streets. Our elected leaders took an oath to serve and protect the people who entrusted them to hold office. Instead of firing our defenders, it’s high time we protect those who protect us.

This will go down in history as one of the greatest impositions ever perpetrated on American citizens. It is inept and morally wrong to inflict harm to your citizens to feed your ego, seeing how many people you can control by imposing a mandatory vaccine. What’s more, it has had adverse effects, sometimes deadly, for a large number of those taking it.

As a police chaplain/officer/certified firefighter, I created Invest USA, a charity to protect those who protect us. We donate bulletproof active shooter vests and nationally advocate for America’s Hero’s. I feel the anguish and pain of families who lost their hero spouses and dads who were not issued lifesaving vests. However, I have joy knowing that our vests saved the lives of 3500 police officers.

I find it ironic how I was considered a hero just twenty years ago for being a First Responder to the 9/11 attacks in New York City as part of the search and rescue team effort. Yet, today first responders are often derided simply for being police officers. In my case, I am doubly-demonized for being “one of those people” who chose not to take the vaccine.

Can’t we do better than this?

Michael A Letts is the CEO and Founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/why_are_police_officers_refusing_the_vax.html

Big Pharma Hunts Down Dissenting Doctors - By Joseph Mercola

November 4, 2021, the Biden administration announced two major COVID jab policies aimed at two-thirds of American workers.1 At the time, 70% of American adults had supposedly acquiesced to the novel gene therapy, but that was not enough.

In violation of the U.S. Constitution, Biden charged the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to create a rule that all employers with 100 employees or more must have a fully “vaccinated” staff or face stiff fines.

At the same time, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) implemented a requirement that forced health care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to be fully “vaccinated” or lose their jobs.2

The deadline for both of these policies was January 4, 2022. As predicted, OSHA wasted no time before suggesting that the policy might be expanded to companies with fewer than 100 employees as well.

Court Permanently Blocks OSHA ‘Vaccine’ Rule

Fortunately, 10 days later, November 14, 2021, a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals permanently blocked OSHA from implementing and enforcing its COVID jab rule, on the basis that the emergency temporary standard (ETS) exceeded the scope of OSHA’s authority and/or was unconstitutional.

Challenges have been filed in several federal courts, however, so the legal fight is far from over.3 What’s more, while OSHA has complied with the court’s decision, suspending its ETS and any activities related to it, the Biden administration is brazenly encouraging employers to implement the suspended rule nonetheless.4 It’s lawless beyond belief, so employers would be wise to think long and hard before following such dictates.

AMA Sides With and Encourages Lawlessness

The American Medical Association is also showing its true colors, actually siding with the White House on this issue. Yes, the AMA is actually telling employers to go ahead and implement the mandate in spite of the court’s permanent injunction.5,6

Essentially, the Biden administration and the AMA are banking on the Fifth Circuit Court’s decision being overturned — and the AMA is actively involved in this legal fight7 — but that is a risky game. If the ruling is upheld, companies that fired employees who didn’t want to get the shot, even though the ETS had been suspended, leave themselves wide open to all sorts of legal actions.

How did the AMA go from being an association dedicated to promoting excellence, integrity and ethics in the medical field,8 to persecuting and “excommunicating” doctors who follow their conscience, sound medical practice — and the actual law?

The AMA has gone so far as to actually instruct doctors on how to lie to their patients and the public! In its Winter 2021 “AMA COVID-19 Guide: Background/Messaging on Vaccines, Vaccine Clinical Trials & Combatting Vaccine Misinformation,”9 the AMA explicitly teaches doctors how to deceive patients and the media when asked tough questions about COVID-19, treatment options and COVID shots.

The entire guide is aimed at teaching doctors how to foster confidence in the medical profession in general, as it pertains to treatment of COVID-19, but in particular as it pertains to the experimental COVID shots. The issue of potential hazards is overlooked altogether. Doctors are told to say the shots are safe and effective. End of discussion.

Since when are medical experts not to ponder the potential hazards of a novel, never-before used experimental treatment? To demand blind faith in this regard is unprecedented and unconscionable, but that’s where we are.

AMA Hunts Down Dissenting Doctors

The AMA is now hunting down doctors who think for themselves and act according to conscience and law, and is working with local medical boards to strip them of their license. (Keep in mind that rules and guidance issued by organizations such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and OSHA are not laws. None of these organizations have the authority to create law.)

The video above features a press conference given by Dr. Mary Bowden, an ear, nose and throat doctor with hospital privileges at Houston Methodist, who was suspended after a series of Twitter posts in which she stated that “Vaccine mandates are wrong,” “Ivermectin works” and “Given the current climate and the writing on the wall, I am shifting my practice focus to treating the unvaccinated.”10

According to Houston Methodist, she was suspended pending an investigation of her “inappropriate behavior” and “inappropriate and disrespectful language.” In a series of tweets, Houston Methodist said:11

“Dr. Mary Bowden, who recently joined the medical staff at Houston Methodist Hospital, is using her social media accounts to express her personal and political opinions about the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments.

These opinions, which are harmful to the community, do not reflect reliable medical evidence or the values of Houston Methodist, where we have treated more than 25,000 COVID-19 inpatients, and where all our employees and physicians are vaccinated to protect our patients …

Dr. Bowden, who has never admitted a patient at Houston Methodist Hospital, is spreading dangerous misinformation which is not based in science.”

‘They’re Trying to Make an Example Out of Me’

November 17, 2021, Bowden announced her resignation. In her press statement (see video), Bowden explained that the reason she never admitted any patients to Houston Methodist, where she’s had hospital privileges for the past two years, was because of her aggressive early treatment of COVID-19. None of her patients ended up needing in-hospital or emergency care.

Bowden said she was surprised by the suspension of her hospital privileges. “It’s astounding to me, as a physician, that I am not entitled to my medical opinion,” she said. She also said she did “not appreciate” how Houston Methodist chose to handle the situation, publicly vilifying her instead of having a face-to-face conversation.

“They could have suspended my privileges very quietly,” she said. “Instead they took it to the media … I think they’re trying to make an example out of me … showing people … if you dare challenge the vaccine agenda, this is what happens to you … They beat you down.”

In the wake of Houston Methodist’s public comments about her, trolls have been leaving fake reviews on her website and harassing her in various ways. “I don’t feel I’m getting fair coverage of my side of the story,” she said. Bowden also defended her position to KHOU11 News:12

“I never closed my doors. I was open seven days a week during the pandemic. I’ve tested over 80,000 people for COVID. I’ve treated over 2,000 people for COVID. I’ve tried to stay ahead of COVID. I have tried to be proactive in treating my patients.

I’m not dangerous. I’m not doing anything dangerous. For them to paint me that way is ridiculous. I will continue to see any and all COVID patients. I would never turn away someone with a life-threatening illness. But for the routine ENT [ear, nose and throat] stuff, I was going to prioritize the unvaccinated …

If someone has an illness, they have an illness. What difference does it make if they have been vaccinated? You’re going to treat them. It’s like saying you’re a smoker, we’ll put you in the back of the line for treating your lung cancer. That’s not the way it goes in medicine.”

Dissenting nurses are also finding themselves persecuted by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing and other leading nursing organizations, which November 16, 2021, issued a joint policy statement13 stating that nurses who disseminate “non-scientific and misleading COVID-19 information” will be held to account and could face disciplinary action by their board of nursing.

No License for Disinformation — Another Front Group

As I’ve explained in several previous articles, Arabella Advisors — the for-profit hub of a liberal “dark money” network — routinely sets up and runs temporary front groups to promote a specific agenda.14 The No License for Disinformation15 (NLFD) group fits this description perfectly.

As most now know, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a medical doctor in his own right, has been the primary challenger of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s lies, and the NLFD is now instructing willing individuals to report him to the Kentucky Medical Board, with the aim of getting his medical license revoked.16

The NLFD also promotes the false information disseminated by the dark-money group known as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). But who are the NLFD?17 At the very bottom of their website, it says, “Created & Developed by EverydayAmericanJoe.”18 Here’s a screenshot of it, just in case they wisen up and change it, because it is more than a little revealing.

EverydayAmericanJoe was a website dedicated to supporting Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. (As of this writing, that site has been disabled.19) The website was created by a marketing strategist named Chris Gilroy.

According to his LinkedIn profile,20 Gilroy created EverydayAmericanJoe.com, “the largest Biden-Harris grassroots website online,” as a freelance senior marketing consultant and designer for the Biden campaign. Since 2007, he’s been the president of The Microtechs LLC, an online marketing, web development and digital advertising firm that produces custom websites and apps “that our clients can manage themselves.”

Aside from the EverydayAmericanJoe clue, there’s no indication of who is actually running the NLFD. It simply claims to be a “non-partisan grassroots coalition of Americans” whose goal it is to get state medical boards to “protect the public” from medical professionals “who spread medical disinformation.” In all likelihood, the NLFD is run by a coalition that is far from non-partisan.

Not surprisingly, the NLFD relies on the CCDH’s “Disinformation Dozen” report, which has been denounced as biased and flawed in the extreme by Facebook.21 While the CCDH claims 12 individuals are responsible for 73% of anti-vaccine content on the social media platform, a Facebook investigation found that, collectively, we account for just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content.

It’s quite clear that the CCDH exists to fabricate “evidence” that is then used to destroy the opposition in order to control the information, and the NLFD relies on this report to suppress First Amendment rights.22 Indeed, Biden himself has publicly promoted and relied on this dark money CCDH report.23

NIH Director Echoes the IGCD

Expanding this spider web a bit further, the National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins recently called for anyone who spreads COVID “misinformation” to be “brought to justice.”24

His nebulous threat echoes that of Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla who, in a November 2021 interview with Atlantic Council CEO Frederick Kempe, stated that medical professionals who warn against the COVID shot are “criminals, because they have literally cost millions of lives.”25 As noted by Zero Hedge:26

“That’s an interesting benchmark given that it was once considered false to claim that COVID vaccines didn’t stop the vaccinated spreading COVID, which is now an all too obvious fact.

Quite what constitutes ‘misinformation’ about COVID-19 is anyone’s guess given that several things that turned out to be plausible or true, such as the origin of the virus behind the Wuhan lab, were once deemed to be ‘misinformation.’ It seems likely that whatever the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci or Pfizer deem to be ‘misinformation’ will become the standard.”

The same kind of militant rhetoric is also coming from the International Grand Committee on Disinformation (IGCD), which functions as a “forum for information sharing, collaboration and harmonization of policies to … achieve common goals among democratic states.” One goal in particular is the normalization and legalization of censorship, including medical and scientific censorship.

One of the cofounders of the IGCD was British MP Damian Collins, who also happens to be a CCDH board member, and is part of the U.K.’s Online Safety Bill Committee,27 charged with examining the proposed “Online Safety Bill,” which some have warned would be catastrophic for free speech.

Given the connections between all of these players, we cannot be surprised to find that the U.K. Online Safety Bill includes a provision that would result in a two-year prison sentence for “anti-vaxxers” who spread “false information that they know to be untrue.”28

After all, that’s what the bill is really all about. It has nothing to do with preventing online bullying or the spread of hate online. Of course, in the future, these laws will allow them to silence discussion on any topic that undermines totalitarian rule.

An Open War on the Public

We’re now in a situation where asking valid questions about public health measures are equated to acts of domestic terrorism. It’s unbelievable, yet here we are. Over the past two years, the rhetoric used against those who question the sanity of using unscientific pandemic countermeasures, such as face masks and lockdowns, or share data showing that COVID-19 gene therapies are really bad public health policy, has become increasingly violent.

Dr. Peter Hotez, a virologist who for years has been at the forefront of promoting vaccines of all kinds, for example, has publicly called for cyberwarfare assaults on American citizens who disagree with official COVID narratives, and this vile rhetoric was published in the prestigious science journal Nature, of all places.29

Doctors and nurses are now facing the untenable position of having to choose between doing right by their patients and toeing the line of totalitarianism. This simply cannot go on. It’s profoundly unhealthy and dangerous in a multitude of ways.

While frustrating and intimidating, we must all be relentless in our pursuit and sharing of the truth, and we must relentlessly demand our elected representatives stand up for freedom of speech and other Constitutional rights, including, and especially, the rights of medical doctors to express their medical opinions.

Sources and References

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