A Young Girl Learns the Value of Questioning Authority

 

 

Back in March, Kirkus Reviews had a profile of me, in which I discuss my writing, my life, and especially Annabel. You can check it out here.

From the profile:

In Annabel Pickering and the Sky Pirates: The Fantastical Contraption, 13-year-old Annabel, a latter-day Pippi Longstocking, gets ensnared in a battle between authoritarians and freedom fighters after her parents are kidnapped by the police, who turn out to be the bad guys. She finds herself assisted in her own escape by rebel pirates, who turn out to be the good guys.

Bretigne Shaffer, a journalist who has turned to full-time fiction writing, considers themes of betrayal in Annabel Pickering. The middle-grade adventure book follows Annabel’s steam-powered adventures, which transport her from an elite girls’ school to the rule-breaking world of buccaneers. Set in an alternate 19th-century England—illustrated via Florian Garbay’s black-and-white images—Shaffer explores Annabel’s psychological changes as she sees loved ones’ darker sides. Shaffer explains that she wanted to show children the “nature of empire and war, freedom of speech and thought, [and] how prohibition affects society.” She also, she admits, is interested in pirates, having briefly written about piracy in the South China Sea in her past life as a journalist.

In Shaffer’s novel, which Kirkus calls “an engaging introduction to a world of wonder and intrigue,” children are brought up to respect the queen and the near-autocratic rule she enforces over her kingdom. When Annabel’s parents are abducted, she manages to evade capture and takes refuge with eccentric spinster Miss Doubtweather. Eventually Annabel, Miss Doubtweather, and her niece escape with the band of ill-mannered, law-breaking, fabulously brave pirates. 

As Annabel’s understanding of the complexities of intellectual and social freedom evolve and she learns that her kidnapped parents were part of a secret society of freethinkers, she begins to view them as moral heroes. This is heady stuff for middle graders, but Shaffer makes it accessible and age-appropriate. It’s also, she believes, essential for younger readers, particularly American ones, to think about the price individuals and societies pay when respect for authority turns into reverence.

 

 

WTMWD #70: Jeremy Hammond's "The War on Informed Consent: The Persecution of Dr. Paul Thomas by the Oregon Medical Board"

Only days after publishing a study comparing long-term health outcomes of vaccinated children to those of unvaccinated children, Dr. Paul Thomas had his medical license suspended by the Oregon Medical Board. 

Jeremy Hammond's latest book tells Dr. Thomas' story, but is really about much more: Hammond builds the context within which the persecution of Dr. Thomas arose, and in doing so, tells the story of today's health freedom movement.

Anyone who wonders where that movement sprung from, or why thousands of parents around the world are so passionate about defending their right to choose what medical treatments their children are given, should start with this book.

Jeremy's book, "The War on Informed Consent: The Persecution of Dr. Paul Thomas by the Oregon Medical Board", can be found here.

You can find Jeremy's writing, and support his work, here.

And my interview with Dr. Thomas from last December is here.

 

WTMWD # 69: Revolutionizing Healthcare - with Dr. Keith Smith

Dr. Keith Smith, of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma,  is one of the heroes of the free-market healthcare reform movement. In this episode, we talk about what's really behind the dysfunction of this industry - and what can be done about it.

See ReasonTV's 2012 piece on the Surgery Center of Oklahoma.

The site Dr. Smith mentions for finding direct primary care providers is DPCFrontier.com

And this is the site for the Free Market Medical Association.

No, The US Military Occupation of Afghanistan did NOT Improve Women's Lives there

 

Image: Public domain.

 

Before your friends start trying to tell you how awful it is that the US military is pulling out of Afghanistan, how awful especially for the women, whose lives were made so much better by the US occupation - please read this. I wrote it eleven years ago, when the occupiers had already been there nearly nine years too long. From the article:

."..somebody might want to think hard about the human consequences of American withdrawal. What happens to the Afghan women who removed their burqas in the late fall of 2001, or the girls who enrolled in government schools?"

Sadly, it is very likely that they will continue to face abuse, disfiguring attacks and even death for their acts of simple courage – just as they do today under US occupation. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that these kinds of attacks and the overall quality of life for Afghan women have only grown worse with the US presence.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission reported in March of 2008 that violence against women had nearly doubled from the previous year, and a 2009 Human Rights Watch report concludes that "(w)hereas the trend had clearly been positive for women's rights from 2001–2005, the trend is now negative in many areas." Other reports (including one from Amnesty International in May of 2005) call the first part of that statement into question:

 

Says Ann Jones, journalist and author of Kabul in Winter, "For most Afghan women, life has stayed the same. And for a great number, life has gotten much worse."

Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission, says "the attacks against women both external and within the family have gone up. Domestic violence has increased. (The current) judiciary is imprisoning more women than ever before in Afghanistan. And they are imprisoning them for running away from their homes, for refusing to marry the man that their family picked for them, for even being a victim of rape."

Anand Gopal, Afghanistan correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, says "The situation for women in the Pashtun area is actually worse than it was during the Taliban time. …(U)nder the Taliban, women were kept in burqas and in their homes, away from education. Today, the same situation persists. They're kept in burqas, in homes, away from education, but on top of that they are also living in a war zone."

 

"Five years after the fall of the Taliban, and the liberation of women hailed by Laura Bush and Cherie Blair, thanks to the US and British invasion," wrote The Independent's Kim Sengupta in November of 2006, "such has been the alarming rise in suicide that a conference was held on the problem in the Afghan capital just a few days ago."

The US military has made life worse for women in Afghanistan, not better. Is it possible that a US exit will result in their lives becoming even worse than they are now, as Bret Stephens and Time magazine fear? Of course it is possible. But what is certain is that the occupation has had a harmful effect on the lives of the vast majority of Afghan civilians – not a positive one as the promoters of war as a vehicle for social change assert. Also indisputable is that the Taliban has grown in strength since the occupation began, and it only continues to do so. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has looked closely at the motives for terrorism. Even US intelligence agencies have acknowledged that the US occupation of Iraq has strengthened Islamic fundamentalism and ."..made the overall terrorism problem worse."

You can read the whole thing (and I think you should) here.

 

 

Sanctuary Jurisdictions for Medical Freedom - tomorrow at 1pm Pacific Time

 

UPDATE: The recorded video is up here.

Mothers forced to give birth in masks; family members prevented from being with loved ones in hospitals; increased efforts to force vaccines on those who don't want them. State infringement of our rights in the realm of medicine and healthcare is nothing new. The time is ripe now for some practical solutions, and Bretigne Shaffer has some ideas, based in common law and the tradition of nullification of laws that violate our rights.

Please invite your friends and colleagues to join the discussion and ask questions.

Tomorrow, Weds. August 11, at 1:00pm Pacific Time, 4:00pm Eastern.

https://YourFreedomHub.com/sanctuary

 

A Quick Look at that Myocarditis Study - and the Larger Problem with the Conversation

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon.

 

There's a not-yet-peer-reviewed study going around now, that claims to have found that "(y)oung males infected with the (SARS-Cov2) virus are up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as those who have received the vaccine."

 

So... is that what the study in fact finds? 

 

I took a quick look, and here are my thoughts:

It looks like these folks did as good a job as they could of gathering data on myocarditis with Covid-19 in this age group. And they are pretty up front about the limitations of what they found.

 

Here's the problem: The numbers they use to compare their findings to, the numbers for myocarditis associated with the vaccine - are from VAERS. VAERS is a passive surveillance system, and is well known that adverse events are very much *underreported* to VAERS. By some estimates, only 1% of AEs are reported to VAERS (although I doubt it is that low right now, given the heightened awareness of the system now) - whatever the number is though, we do know that it is some fraction of actual AEs. So a comparison between data of the kind that this study came up with, and data coming from VAERS, is not very meaningful.

 

There's also this (from the study):

 

"Whatever the true hospitalization rate [for those with myocarditis associated with covid-19] was, it was considerably lower than that reported in the VAERS, where more than three-fourths of reported cases of myocarditis were hospitalized.16. Cases have been described as generally mild." (Above this, they note that the hospitalization rate from their database was 10%, but that it may actually be higher.)

 

The point here being that the comparison between the data in this study and the data from VAERS is a comparison between apples and oranges: The myocarditis cases that have been reported to VAERS are clearly more serious on average than are the cases associated with covid-19 from this study.

 

This could be because vaccines create a more severe form of myocarditis than the virus does, or it could simply be that only the most serious cases of myocarditis end up getting reported to VAERS. We don't know.

 

And that is my point here: WE DON'T KNOW how many cases of myocarditis have been caused by, or associated with, the vaccine. We don't have good data that can give us a good idea of what that number is. So any comparison between vaccine-induced myocarditis and covid-19-induced myocarditis is not very meaningful.

 

 

The bigger problem.

 

But there's a larger problem here, and it is this:

The way the issue of vaccine safety is presented in the media, and in a great many studies such as this one, it's as if there are only two choices available to people worried about Covid-19: Either take your chances with the virus, or get the vaccine.

 

That's it. There's nothing else to be done. No other conceivable way of protecting yourself from this scary scary virus (assuming that's what one believes it to be.)

 

But of course that's not true. What has been true all along is that there are many ways of fortifying one's own system against this virus and other viruses, and what became clear pretty early on in this debacle is that there are also ways to treat Covid-19 that are pretty safe and pretty successful.

 

Vitamin D is one of those things. Hydroxychloroquine is another. Ivermectin is another.

 

None of these treatments come with anything like the (still not entirely known) risks of harm that we are seeing from the vaccines. 

 

But none of them are good for business. Not one of those things you can do to protect or treat yourself are under patent protection and so they don't stand to make the folks who run the medical establishment tons of money. And so we have witnessed, over the past year and a half, an almost unbelievably transparent effort to suppress information about these other things. 

 

On the flip side of that censorship is the language that is used to present the information those folks do want you to hear.

 

And this study - or rather, the question implicit in the study's design, and what that says about the way the entire conversation has been framed by the people who believe it is their job to frame our conversations for us - is a very clear example of that. It is an example of someone responding in all earnestness to the only question the conversation allows: Is it more dangerous to get the vaccine, or to not get the vaccine - while doing nothing else to protect yourself, because the rules of this conversation are that we cannot discuss anything else that might be done to protect against this virus.

 

Do you see how this works? The people whose job it is to make sure that you think the things their bosses want you to think have put an awful lot of effort into framing the conversation a certain way, and in making sure that unwanted questions don't make their way into that conversation.

 

But here's the thing: As much power as these people have, as much of the mainstream media and of medical research their view dominates, as much as they are able to buy politicians who then throw their weight around and get the social media companies to do their bidding, and even as much as they really do have the power to craft the conversation that the vast majority of the population swallows unthinkingly... as much as they really do have that impressive amount of power, they don't actually have the power to control the conversation. You and I have that. 

 

Because even the people who unthinkingly swallow what the mainstream news tells them, who happily accept the conversation as it is given to them by the conversation crafters, even those people have the ability to think for themselves and to decide for themselves what the conversation will be about. Whether they will do it or not is another question. But they do have the capacity to do it - we all do.

 

And there are a few of us - a very few it seems sometimes - who are aware of this capacity, aware that our conversations and our information are being manipulated, and who insist on asking our own questions and framing our own conversations. Short of killing us, or locking us away, there is nothing they can do to stop us from thinking and from speaking out about what we think. They can destroy us - any brute can destroy. But they really truly cannot control us. And I think that fact scares the hell out of them.

 

 

 

WTMWD #68: Kevin McKernan on the Dr. David Martin video and how patent law really impacts research

 

By now you've probably seen the video where Reiner Fuellmich speaks with Dr. David Martin about his examination of patent records, which he says show that there is nothing "novel" about SARS-Cov-2, and that the genetic components that purportedly make it "novel" were in fact patented many years ago.

Kevin McKernan, CSO of Medicinal Genomics, knows quite a lot about genetic science and  he also knows a thing or two about patent law -  in particular the patent law around genetic research. So today, I asked him for his take on what Dr. Martin said in that video, and in his accompanying dossier.

In this episode, we hit some of the major points from Dr. Martin's presentation, and Kevin points out a few places where he thinks Dr. Martin gets it wrong. There's a lot more to dig into here though, and Kevin suggests a future conversation with himself and Dr. Martin - I'll keep everyone posted about that.

We also talk about the legitimacy of patent law, and intellectual property itself, and about whether patent protection helps medical research to flourish, or serves to stifle it.

The transcript of the video with Dr. Martin can be found here.

Kevin's Twitter thread on some of the issues we discussed can be found here.

And you can follow Kevin on Twitter here.

 

 

 

WTMWD #67: Remember when Dr. Colleen Huber was Kicked off of Twitter?

No, you probably don't. And that's part of what is so insidious about this information purge: So much of it happens without anyone even noticing.

Dr. Huber had been posting information about things like mask harm, the damage done by lockdowns, and evidence for effective treatments for Covid-19 - including some of her own research. In 2021, all of this is heresy. And so, back in April, she was "permanently suspended" from Twitter.

We talk about her suspension, and about some of the information that got her suspended. 

A note: I apologize for the choppiness of the audio in some spots. We had some connection problems, and while I've edited out the worst ones, there are still some brief choppy spots.

You can find Dr. Huber's research and writing on masks, lockdowns, and related topics, here.

And you  can find Dr. Huber's books on Amazon. Her book "The Defeat of COVID: 500+ medical studies show what works & what doesn't" is here.

 

JP Sears Deserves a Medal

Every time I say comedian JP Sears has outdone himself in the realm of blistering satire in the service of liberty... he goes and does it again. Here's his latest, "What Giving Up Your Medical Freedom is Like":

 

...oh and this one was brilliant too:

...and of course there was this one, from a while back. I think this one got removed from YouTube for a short time:

...and there are so many more that I'm leaving out. Can we just give this man a medal now?

Can Mass Psychosis be Defeated?

 

Why it turns out, yes it can.

Many thanks to JP Sears for sending on this video, which without referring to the specifics of our current world, very aptly describes it. And pay close attention to the advice from Vaclav Havel near the end, regarding setting up "parallel systems." All the stuff I'm talking about in my new membership group? None of it is new - the people who have fought and defeated totalitarian regimes in the past knew all about it. Now it's our turn. And maybe, hopefully, if we can do an even better job of this, nobody will have to take a turn at this ever again.

As JP says:

This video, in very clear objective ways, outlines the physiological tactics tyrants use to control the masses. One of the reasons why I think this video is so impactful is that it doesn't use any literal references from the tyranny we see happening today. The information more digestible, especially to people who are either unaware or just beginning to wake up to what's happening in our world. Watch and share it here.

 

If You Want to be on the Mailing List:

 

 

Yes, I am starting a list for those who want to be in my new membership group – the one for people who are serious about building alternative systems to the one that is falling down around us. (See below. Also, I forgot to mention in that post, both protection and justice. Those need new systems too, and will be part of our discussions.)

If you'd like to be on this list, please just email me. You can find my email at the "email me" link to the right of this post - or... right here: BretigneATgmailDOTcom.

And welcome aboard!

 

 

An Announcement

 

 

 

I've been saying for years now that the most important thing we can do – those of us who care about liberty and about having a free society to live in – is to build the foundations of that society now. Not to complain about the increasingly authoritarian society we find ourselves in, but to build its replacement.

For me, this is especially true in the realm of what most of us call "social services": Caring for the most vulnerable, education, and health care. (For some background as to how the state has stifled private solutions in these areas, see my video on Sanctuary Jurisdictions for Medical Freedom.) And, as I just got home from five weeks in the hospital with our daughter, dealing with her seizures, the need for solutions here is especially fresh for me.

Now, halfway into 2021, and amid the wreckage that has been wrought – in healthcare, in education, and in the lives of the most vulnerable among us – this focus is needed more than ever. For me, that means that it is time to stop talking and start building.

So I am going to be putting my podcast on hold – not stopping it entirely, but I will no longer commit to producing an episode each week. If something comes up, and especially if it is directly related to what I am building, then I will put out the occasional episode. The same goes for my writing and blogging generally.

What will I be doing instead? A few things, starting with creating a small, Private-Membership-Association school, and with laying the groundwork for a self-sustaining home and community for those with intellectual disabilities that require them to have support and care throughout their lives.

There will be many pieces to this larger project, including healthcare, therapy, vocational training, and hopefully the incorporation of elder care. Ultimately, we will be looking for other like-minded entrepreneurs to partner with us.

And of course, these projects are part of a much bigger picture. I'm not the only one who realizes that this is what we need to be doing. All over the world, people are looking into and starting intentional communities, Private Membership Associations, and other structures for carving out spaces where people can live as they choose. There has long been a need for this, but after the sudden (it wasn't really all that sudden) takeover of our lives by authoritarian overlords, the need has become urgent.

So we need to be talking with each other. I don't mean that we all need to agree about precisely what our solutions will look like, or even have a shared grand vision. Only that we share the core principle of human liberty, and a desire to connect, support each other, share ideas, and in some cases collaborate.

To this end, I will be starting a membership group for people who are serious about building free societies. If you have created, or are looking to create, a PMA, a mutual-aid society, a "sanctuary for freedom" city, any kind of alternative healthcare or health insurance project, an organic food co-op or network, homeschooling co-op, or are serious about creating any kind of alternative support system and/or society that respects individual liberty, then this might be the group for you. 

Basic membership will be free. Later, I will probably add a paid membership option, for things like webinars with people with expertise in these areas, and maybe training sessions. I will keep everyone posted as it develops, and should have something in place by mid July. 

Finally, thank you to everyone who has been listening to "What Then Must We Do?" I promise the podcast will be back full-time, at some point in the future. For now, though, I need to focus on building.

WTMWD # 66: Externalities: Is Carrying Germs an Act of Aggression? With Don Boudreaux

 

 

 

 

Don Boudreaux is the perfect person to address the "you don't have a right to infect others" argument. Don is a professor of economics (among many other accomplishments), and he also has a law degree. So he has quite a lot to say about the nature of "externalities", both from an economic perspective and one grounded in law, and in common-law principles in particular.

We also address the question of whether the perpetrators of the devastating lockdowns and other restrictions should be held accountable for the harm they have done via something similar to the Nuremberg trials.

And in the end, I think I even manage to cheer him up a little regarding humanity's prospects for the future.

Don writes about externalities here.

...and you can find more of his writings here, or on Cafe Hayek where he blogs regularly.

Some of the LA fireworks videos we talk about are posted here.

 

How to Hold those in Power Accountable Under Common Law: Exhibit 1

 

 

I don't know if you all have noticed, but over this past year, a whole lot of people seem to have become aware of their fundamental rights. Maybe that's just what happens when they are trampled by (seemingly) unaccountable people in positions of authority.

More than that though, there seems to be a surge in awareness of the ways in which our rights are embedded in our traditions of law and justice, and a growing awareness that our current systems have strayed very far from these traditions. 

The good news is that the foundations are still there. Common law is still legitimate law in any jurisdiction that has it as part of its legal foundation. And I would argue that it is legitimate law absolutely anywhere, even if there is no such tradition, simply because every man or woman on this earth was born with inalienable rights. Actions that violate those rights are crimes whether or not some local jurisdiction recognizes them as such.

The reason I say this is good news is that we already have, within our existing systems, the tools to return our communities to common-law jurisdictions. And Tahra, and the others at The Freedom Festival, are among those educating us on specifically how we can do that.

This video, From The Freedom Festival, on YouTube, is one beautiful and courageous example.

From the description:

Amazing result by a group of lawful observers giving notice to senior Metropolitan Police officers on Saturday the 10th of October 2020 outside Downing Street.

Within seconds of being given notice by Tahra of https://www.TheFreedomFestival.uk, Chief Inspector James Hawkins directed all of his 100s of public order officers to leave the area.

A true victory for People Power using Common Law. Thank you to The Sleeping Warrior from Liverpool for producing this video. Please subscribe to his channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgc9...

Learn more about The Freedom Festival and the work they are doing to educate about common law and how to protect and assert your rights in the face of unlawful authoritarianism - including regular training sessions on Zoom, here.

 

 

Debunking the Debunking of VAERS

 

You've probably seen something like this in the past week or so:

 

 

Someone is working hard to spread the message that VAERS - the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, that records post-vaccination injury, side effects and death - is unreliable because "anyone" can submit a VAERS report.

This is an old talking point from the camp that wants us all to believe that any ill effects from vaccines are de minimus, and are far outweighed by the benefits vaccines confer. But it's a talking point that, upon scrutiny, doesn't make a lot of sense. 

Here's why:

1. Yes, it is technically true that "anyone" can submit a report to VAERS. However knowingly submitting a false report is a Federal offense. So anyone (including vaccine-pushing trolls trying to make a point) who does this is putting a lot at risk;

2. It has been pretty well established that vaccine injuries are very much under-reported. First, there is David Kessler's paper on reporting adverse events, in which he states (regarding adverse events from all medications, not only vaccines) "Only about 1% of serious events are reported to the FDA, according to one study." That study is "Rhode Island physicians' recognition and reporting of adverse drug reactions" from Scott HD, Rosenbaum SE, Waters WJ et al, in the Rhode Island Medical Journal, 1987. 

My guess is that 1% is extreme. But other studies, and surveys, support the claim that medical professionals are failing to report vaccine injuries (only 18% of doctors said that they reported post-vaccine events in one survey, and one out of 40 in another.) And anecdotal accounts abound from parents who believe their children were harmed by vaccines, but whose doctors either failed to inform them that they could make a report, or flat-out refused to make a report on their behalf.

3. Again, yes, "anyone" can submit a report to VAERS. But who actually does?

Let's take a look:

 

 

According to the VAERS site itself, in 2015, only 7% of all reports came from vaccine recipients or their parents/guardians, and another 10% came from "other sources." The rest of the reports, 83% of them, the vast, vast majority, came from vaccine manufacturers, health care providers, and state immunization programs.

So, even if we assume that every single report filed by a vaccine recipient or family member (or "other") is invalid, the totality of those reports accounts for a whopping 17% of all VAERS reports. Or at least it did back in 2015 and 2017. If "just anyone" being able to submit a VAERS report is a problem, it is not a very big one.

You may notice that I had to take this screenshot from the Wayback Machine. You may wonder why that is. Here's why: Because sometime in 2017, the folks at VAERS took this information down from their site. Or, if it is still there, I was unable to find it. 

Maybe now you're wondering why they took this information down, and whether - now that so many people are interested in VAERS, and in how "just anyone" can submit a report – they might consider putting it back up again.

So am I.

 

 

Someone REALLY Doesn't Want You to See this Summit!

 

 

Last Friday, I received this email, from the "Truth over Fear Summit" folks:

"Today is the day!  We will be digging into Patrick Coffin's Truth Over Fear summit, featuring the courageous Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the brave clergyman who exposed two major scandals in The Catholic Church and wrote a highly compelling letter to President Trump regarding the battle between good and evil at play with the current lockdown crisis. Also on the line-up is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Steven Mosher, Dr. Judy Mikovits, Reiner Fuellmich, and some seriously courageous experts who are battling evil with everything they've got."

 

About eight hours later, I got this email from them: "Truth Over Fear Summit CANCELLED by Censors." It read:

"Today was supposed to be the day that this epic list of featured speakers became open for us all. We have received hundreds of emails from you guys wondering what happened. Error messages, etc. We were able to talk to the organizers directly and our suspicions were correct—they have been censored. The Truth Over Fear Summit was cancelled and de-platformed without warning, on launch day by Kartra, their software provider."

 

The above is literally everything I know about the cancelling of this summit. I don't know why Kartra made the decision to cancel their support for the summit, and I hope that more details will emerge soon - including details on the lawsuit against the company for breach of contract.

But I will say that this kind of thing has become disturbingly common. In a bone-chilling announcement earlier this week, Dr. Joseph Mercola told readers that he would be deleting from his website "all articles related to vitamins D, C, Zinc, and Covid-19." 

Why? 

Dr. Mercola gives a detailed accounting of official efforts to silence those who write or speak critically about vaccines. Including, in what can only be a direct violation of the First Amendment, calls by some state attorneys general for Facebook and Twitter to ban the speech of those identified by HealthGuard (part of NewsGuard, and funded by the PR firm Publicis Groupe, which is a partner with the World Economic Forum) as leading "anti-vaxxers." 

Mercola also writes about the call by Dr. Peter Hotez (president of the Gates-funded Sabin Vaccine Institute), to treat intellectual challenges to vaccine orthodoxy as "aggression" deserving of a "counteroffensive" involving a task force that would include "experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament..."

Let that sink in for just a moment. According to this guy, who by all appearances made it all the way through medical school, a challenge to one's beliefs about the world is the equivalent of violence.

But what does any of this have to do with Vitamin D, C, or Zinc? And why has Dr. Mercola decided to remove all articles about these supplements and Covid-19 from his website?

Here's what he has to say:

"You may have noticed our website was recently unavailable; this was due to direct cyber-attacks launched against us. We have several layers of protective mechanisms to secure the website as we’ve anticipated such attacks from malevolent organizations.

"Through these progressively increasing stringent measures, I have refused to succumb to these governmental and pharmaceutical thugs and their relentless attacks. I have been confident and willing to defend myself in the court of law, as I’ve had everything reviewed by some of the best attorneys in the country.

"Unfortunately, threats have now become very personal and have intensified to the point I can no longer preserve much of the information and research I’ve provided to you thus far. These threats are not legal in nature, and I have limited ability to defend myself against them. If you can imagine what billionaires and their front groups are capable of, I can assure you they have been creative in deploying their assets to have this content removed."

 

If this doesn't send a chill up your spine, then I'm not sure what will. I am tempted to say that we are living in unprecedented times, but the truth is that the desire of powerful people to censor information that runs counter to whatever their agenda is at the moment is nothing new. Even schoolchildren should be able to point to a few prominent examples from history. But what is deeply, deeply, disturbing is the extent to which, even today, even in the year 2021, so very few people even recognize it for what it is, or if they do, are disturbed by it.

If you are among the few who are rightly disturbed by what is going on here, then I hope you will take a look at the Truth Over Fear Summit, now being held this coming Friday - the day after tomorrow. They've rebuilt on a new platform, and the Summit will be running for three days starting on May 7th at 8:00am Pacific Time. 

You'll hear about topics from treatments such as Ivermectin that are being suppressed, herd immunity, Covid-19 vaccine injury, the threat of mandated vaccination... and perhaps most importantly, how to fight back. Reiner Fuellmich, who is leading the charge to hold perpetrators of human-rights crimes accountable for their actions, will be speaking on Saturday, as will Barbara Loe Fisher and Peggy Hall. If you're serious about real solutions to this madness, you will want to hear these people.

You can see all of that by going here.

Yes, this is an affiliate link. Yes, I will get a little something if you click on it (I think). But what I've just described is part of the "Free Pass" program, and there's also more content that you can pay for. Whether you pay or not though, I hope you will check it out if for no other reason than to show the censors that they aren't going to win this.

 

 

WTMWD #65: What Roger Koops Learned When he Audited the CDC

 

 

 

 

As director of quality assurance for a pharmaceutical company, Roger Koops interacted closely with the FDA for many years. I speak with him in this episode about his experiences, the nature of that agency and about how the regulatory landscape has expanded and become more burdensome over time. He also tells about the time he was tasked with auditing the CDC, what that experience taught him, and what – if anything – that agency is good for.

We also discuss the problem of professional myopia in the world of science, and the implications that has for the rest of us.

Roger Koops is a contributing author for AIER, and is also a retired scientist, with a PhD in chemistry and over 25 years in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. He has authored or co-authored several papers on pharmaceutical technology and chemistry.

I spoke with Roger last month about why he doesn't plan to get the Covid-19 vaccine.

 

WTMWD #64: What Gene Epstein would tell Jordan Peterson about Austrian Economics

 

 

 

 

Recently, Jordan Peterson asked who he should have as a guest on his show to talk about Austrian economics, and Gene Epstein's name came up. In this episode, I ask Gene what he would say to Dr. Peterson, or to anyone looking to understand what Austrian economics is all about, what sets it apart from other schools, and why its insights are so important right now.

Gene is the former Barrons economics and books editor, and now hosts the Soho Forum. I spoke with him last month about where he thinks the economy is headed and what individuals can do to protect themselves, here.

The Soho Forum can be found here.

And if you'd like to learn more about Austrian economics, there is no better place to start than the Mises Institute.

I spoke with Mises Institute President, Jeff Deist last December, about whether it might be time for America to break up. 

 

Hope for Humanity #1: Illegal Fireworks Light up the Sky in Los Angeles

 

I had a fantastic conversation with Don Boudreaux earlier today. I've got a backlog of episodes to put up, so this one won't be up for another week or so, but I promised I'd send him something, so here it is:

Last summer, the mayor of Los Angeles declared that ALL fireworks in the city of LA were illegal. Was there an actual law to go along with that declaration? I don't know. Does it even matter anymore? After more than a year of this, it's clear that the vast majority of Californians are happy to live under a dictatorship.

...or ARE they?

Watch this, if you haven't already. It remains one of the most beautiful sights from all of 2020:

More:

...and more:

WTMWD #63: The Tenth Amendment Center's Michael Boldin: How do we do this?

 

 

 

 

I start off asking Michael Boldin, of the Tenth Amendment Center, how we can use the principle of nullification to put an end to the lockdown insanity and create free societies... and we end up talking about everything from the legal foundations of nullification, how crappy most sheriffs are on constitutional rights, Freedom Cells, Vermin Supreme, and how very very important mutual aid is.

I even tell the story of my grandmother's experience with her amazing care home, provided by her mutual-aid society, and how the state has worked to shut these down across the country.

Michael works tirelessly for the Tenth Amendment Center.

The book I mentioned is "From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State", and you can find it here.

This Cato publication has some good stuff on mutual aid too, including an essay on the book above.

The Fully Informed Jury Association is here.

The Institute for Justice is here.

You can learn more about Freedom Cells here and here.

Read about the battle of Tinhorn Flats here.

And of course the Vermin Supreme Institute can be found here.

 

Building Free Communities with Private Membership Associations - a webinar with the Freedom Angels

 

Yesterday, the Freedom Angels hosted a webinar with Vanessa and Mike Colomb of Renegade Ranch, a new Private Membership Association (PMA) grocery store  in Penn Valley, Nevada County, California. They talk about Private Membership Associations - how they work, and how they can be used to build free communities.

You can watch here: