Post by NFA on Feb 13, 2024 15:44:35 GMT 8
Surveillance, Spies, and Snitches
Nearly every nation on earth has a deep-state problem. The elected leaders pretend to represent the people but do they really rule? Four years ago, the unelected bureaucrats took over major swaths of the world, leaving us with a disaster from which everyone today is struggling to rebuild.
What have we learned? At the very least, we know that for freedom to have a vibrant future, we need huge institutional changes. Certainly no more power should be ceded to the World Health Organization and the vast pharmaceutical empire that controls it. We also need truth and transparency. Brownstone Institute brings both to the table daily.
With so many institutions (and intellectuals) discredited in the aftermath, Brownstone is thriving and growing, with support of events, Fellows, and essential research to light the way to a better future.
The Supper Club in West Hartford, CT, on February 21 is filling up fast.
Here is some content since our last email:
Propaganda Looney Tunes By Charles Krblich. Virality with this ease of spread is a fairly novel psychic phenomenon for the human race. So, when a novel physical pathogen came along, both the disease and the memes, cartoons, and propaganda began to spread. Confronted on both physical and psychic fronts, some incredibly bizarre and often vindictive behavior resulted. It isn’t the first time this has happened.
Government Funds AI Tools for Whole-of-Internet Surveillance and Censorship By Debbie Lerman. Internet-wide surveillance and censorship, enabled by the unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence (AI), is here. This is not a futuristic dystopia. It’s happening now. Government agencies are working with universities and nonprofits to use AI tools to surveil and censor content on the Internet. This is not political or partisan. This is not about any particular opinion or idea.
The Forgetting Is Mandatory By Jeffrey Tucker. We dare not comply with this mandatory forgetting. We must remember, and take full account of the deception and destruction the ruling class has caused for no other reason than profits and power. Only then we can learn the right lessons and rebuild on a better foundation for the future.
EU Farmers Rise Against the Climate Cult By David Thunder. Independently from the merits of EU climate policy, two things are clear: first, EU leaders and environmental activists appear to have vastly underestimated the backlash their policies would spark in the farming community; and second, the apparent success of this dramatic EU-wide protest sets a spectacular precedent that will not go unnoticed among farmers and transport companies, whose operating costs are heavily impacted by environmental regulations like carbon taxes.
The FDA and Vaccine Manufacturers Refuse to Show Us Their Work By David Gortler. Not only are the test results confidential, even the methodology used hasn’t been made public. The world just has to take manufacturers’ word that there’s no contamination or variability with the mRNA sequence or its lipid nanoparticle components – even though published epidemiology data indicate otherwise.
DOD Told Pharma Exec the Virus “Posed a National Security Threat” on Feb. 4, 2020 By Debbie Lerman. If the heads of the US public health agencies, including Anthony Fauci (NIAID) and Francis Collins (NIH), were spending a large portion of their time on that day frantically trying to come up with ways to claim the virus was not manufactured in a bioweapons lab – there must have been a reason other than public health. The reason is becoming increasingly undeniable: The Covid crisis was a military/national security operation, not a public health event.
The Hostile Takeover of the Air Force Academy By Scott Sturman. The transformation of the Air Force Academy (AFA) from a military institution to a progressive, liberal arts school has been incremental, relentless, and calculated. The goal to politicize the training and perspectives of cadets, who constitute about 20% of annual Air Force officer commissions, guarantees a source of influential officers who will apply and promote these ideas throughout their military and civilian careers.
Assange, Elon, and the News Not Fit to Print By Brownstone Institute. This is the path toward change. The driving force of history is not impersonal but rather comes down to the actions of people informed by the beliefs they hold. This is why governments throughout history have placed such a high priority on controlling the public mind.
Destructive Solutions to Imaginary Problems By Bruce Davidson. At its recent Davos annual meeting, the WEF focused much of its attention on how to respond to the fictional “Disease X.” This alarmist concern about an imaginary threat follows hard on the heels of the still-unfolding worldwide devastation wrought by extreme “solutions” to a grossly exaggerated disease threat.
The Complexity Science of Medicine Requires Freedom By Russ Gonnering. As I write this, medicine is still “In the Wilderness,” but I can see a brightening horizon. We still need to formulate a counter to the nihilism of Postmodernism and Critical Theory. We still need to re-establish free speech and intellectual freedom in healthcare delivery and education. We still need to raise truth above ideology. But I now think that is a possibility.
$2.7 Trillion Buys “Spectacular” GDP By Peter St. Onge. Fresh GDP numbers came in and it was a blowout. The kind of blowout that only a $2.7 trillion government deficit can buy while the private economy crumbles around it.
An Open Letter to the Davos Crowd By Rob Jenkins. If the past four years have taught us anything, it is that you “elites” are awful people. Your ideas are awful. Your vision for the future is awful. The society you wish to create, with yourselves in charge, would be unspeakably awful. We reject it, and we reject you. So go away and leave us alone—or else suffer the consequences.
CDC’s Vaccine-Efficacy Epidemiologic Incompetence By Harvey Risch. Periodically during the Covid-19 pandemic, CDC scientific staff have employed their available studies’ data to estimate the efficacy of current or recent versions of Covid-19 vaccines to reduce risk of testing positive for Covid-19. While the fact of “testing positive” has been somewhat controversial because of the secret PCR Ct threshold numbers involved that have allowed for uninfectious people with unrecognized Covid-19 from some weeks in the past to remain test-positive, my goal here is to illustrate CDC’s problematic epidemiologic methods that have substantially inflated the vaccine efficacy percents that they have reported.
So Long Ago That It Never Really Happened By Charles Krblich. As election season rolls on and the nation looks set for an election rematch between the mandate-ordering Joseph Biden and the lockdown-ordering Donald Trump, a sense of nostalgia for a lost and forgotten era has creeped into my thoughts. For my nostalgia’s sake at least, that was a long time ago, and it never really happened anyway.
My Medical School Dismissed Me Over Dissent By Kevin Bass. The ruling elite did not see themselves as ideological. They still don’t. They believed and believe that they hold an unfiltered view of the Truth. They see themselves as Hegel’s universal class, advocating for the interests of humanity. Dissent was thus experienced – and is still experienced – not just as disagreement but as immoral. Dissenters were thus removed from social media platforms, fired from positions at America’s prestigious academic departments and companies, and shunned by former peers and professional circles.
Four Years Later: Lockdown “Deaths of Despair” By Toby Rogers. The Economist article points out that deaths of despair now impact nearly every demographic group (not just the poor whites studied by Case and Deaton). But it never mentions Covid nor the Covid lockdowns that The Economist championed in 2020.
What Killed Informed Consent? By Julie Ponesse. In more and less formal ways, Covid was the tool that transformed our supposedly inalienable right to make informed choices about our private lives into a public and readily dispensable good. It was almost as if we had built such a network of infinitesimal choices creating the powerful illusion of choice that we didn’t notice when we were asked to give it all up in an instant.
It’s Time for Left and Right to Unite By Naomi Wolf. More than our sense of self politically is the importance of reflecting on how we can be of service to our country. The same is true for these candidates as well. They both have something to offer this country; so let us utilize them both. And I hope they both look within themselves as well, to remove any sense of a personal ideal that may stand in the way of a unique opportunity to serve all Americans; I hope that the ‘perfect’ won’t stand in the way of ‘the good’ of actually saving our nation.
Nearly every nation on earth has a deep-state problem. The elected leaders pretend to represent the people but do they really rule? Four years ago, the unelected bureaucrats took over major swaths of the world, leaving us with a disaster from which everyone today is struggling to rebuild.
What have we learned? At the very least, we know that for freedom to have a vibrant future, we need huge institutional changes. Certainly no more power should be ceded to the World Health Organization and the vast pharmaceutical empire that controls it. We also need truth and transparency. Brownstone Institute brings both to the table daily.
With so many institutions (and intellectuals) discredited in the aftermath, Brownstone is thriving and growing, with support of events, Fellows, and essential research to light the way to a better future.
The Supper Club in West Hartford, CT, on February 21 is filling up fast.
Here is some content since our last email:
Propaganda Looney Tunes By Charles Krblich. Virality with this ease of spread is a fairly novel psychic phenomenon for the human race. So, when a novel physical pathogen came along, both the disease and the memes, cartoons, and propaganda began to spread. Confronted on both physical and psychic fronts, some incredibly bizarre and often vindictive behavior resulted. It isn’t the first time this has happened.
Government Funds AI Tools for Whole-of-Internet Surveillance and Censorship By Debbie Lerman. Internet-wide surveillance and censorship, enabled by the unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence (AI), is here. This is not a futuristic dystopia. It’s happening now. Government agencies are working with universities and nonprofits to use AI tools to surveil and censor content on the Internet. This is not political or partisan. This is not about any particular opinion or idea.
The Forgetting Is Mandatory By Jeffrey Tucker. We dare not comply with this mandatory forgetting. We must remember, and take full account of the deception and destruction the ruling class has caused for no other reason than profits and power. Only then we can learn the right lessons and rebuild on a better foundation for the future.
EU Farmers Rise Against the Climate Cult By David Thunder. Independently from the merits of EU climate policy, two things are clear: first, EU leaders and environmental activists appear to have vastly underestimated the backlash their policies would spark in the farming community; and second, the apparent success of this dramatic EU-wide protest sets a spectacular precedent that will not go unnoticed among farmers and transport companies, whose operating costs are heavily impacted by environmental regulations like carbon taxes.
The FDA and Vaccine Manufacturers Refuse to Show Us Their Work By David Gortler. Not only are the test results confidential, even the methodology used hasn’t been made public. The world just has to take manufacturers’ word that there’s no contamination or variability with the mRNA sequence or its lipid nanoparticle components – even though published epidemiology data indicate otherwise.
DOD Told Pharma Exec the Virus “Posed a National Security Threat” on Feb. 4, 2020 By Debbie Lerman. If the heads of the US public health agencies, including Anthony Fauci (NIAID) and Francis Collins (NIH), were spending a large portion of their time on that day frantically trying to come up with ways to claim the virus was not manufactured in a bioweapons lab – there must have been a reason other than public health. The reason is becoming increasingly undeniable: The Covid crisis was a military/national security operation, not a public health event.
The Hostile Takeover of the Air Force Academy By Scott Sturman. The transformation of the Air Force Academy (AFA) from a military institution to a progressive, liberal arts school has been incremental, relentless, and calculated. The goal to politicize the training and perspectives of cadets, who constitute about 20% of annual Air Force officer commissions, guarantees a source of influential officers who will apply and promote these ideas throughout their military and civilian careers.
Assange, Elon, and the News Not Fit to Print By Brownstone Institute. This is the path toward change. The driving force of history is not impersonal but rather comes down to the actions of people informed by the beliefs they hold. This is why governments throughout history have placed such a high priority on controlling the public mind.
Destructive Solutions to Imaginary Problems By Bruce Davidson. At its recent Davos annual meeting, the WEF focused much of its attention on how to respond to the fictional “Disease X.” This alarmist concern about an imaginary threat follows hard on the heels of the still-unfolding worldwide devastation wrought by extreme “solutions” to a grossly exaggerated disease threat.
The Complexity Science of Medicine Requires Freedom By Russ Gonnering. As I write this, medicine is still “In the Wilderness,” but I can see a brightening horizon. We still need to formulate a counter to the nihilism of Postmodernism and Critical Theory. We still need to re-establish free speech and intellectual freedom in healthcare delivery and education. We still need to raise truth above ideology. But I now think that is a possibility.
$2.7 Trillion Buys “Spectacular” GDP By Peter St. Onge. Fresh GDP numbers came in and it was a blowout. The kind of blowout that only a $2.7 trillion government deficit can buy while the private economy crumbles around it.
An Open Letter to the Davos Crowd By Rob Jenkins. If the past four years have taught us anything, it is that you “elites” are awful people. Your ideas are awful. Your vision for the future is awful. The society you wish to create, with yourselves in charge, would be unspeakably awful. We reject it, and we reject you. So go away and leave us alone—or else suffer the consequences.
CDC’s Vaccine-Efficacy Epidemiologic Incompetence By Harvey Risch. Periodically during the Covid-19 pandemic, CDC scientific staff have employed their available studies’ data to estimate the efficacy of current or recent versions of Covid-19 vaccines to reduce risk of testing positive for Covid-19. While the fact of “testing positive” has been somewhat controversial because of the secret PCR Ct threshold numbers involved that have allowed for uninfectious people with unrecognized Covid-19 from some weeks in the past to remain test-positive, my goal here is to illustrate CDC’s problematic epidemiologic methods that have substantially inflated the vaccine efficacy percents that they have reported.
So Long Ago That It Never Really Happened By Charles Krblich. As election season rolls on and the nation looks set for an election rematch between the mandate-ordering Joseph Biden and the lockdown-ordering Donald Trump, a sense of nostalgia for a lost and forgotten era has creeped into my thoughts. For my nostalgia’s sake at least, that was a long time ago, and it never really happened anyway.
My Medical School Dismissed Me Over Dissent By Kevin Bass. The ruling elite did not see themselves as ideological. They still don’t. They believed and believe that they hold an unfiltered view of the Truth. They see themselves as Hegel’s universal class, advocating for the interests of humanity. Dissent was thus experienced – and is still experienced – not just as disagreement but as immoral. Dissenters were thus removed from social media platforms, fired from positions at America’s prestigious academic departments and companies, and shunned by former peers and professional circles.
Four Years Later: Lockdown “Deaths of Despair” By Toby Rogers. The Economist article points out that deaths of despair now impact nearly every demographic group (not just the poor whites studied by Case and Deaton). But it never mentions Covid nor the Covid lockdowns that The Economist championed in 2020.
What Killed Informed Consent? By Julie Ponesse. In more and less formal ways, Covid was the tool that transformed our supposedly inalienable right to make informed choices about our private lives into a public and readily dispensable good. It was almost as if we had built such a network of infinitesimal choices creating the powerful illusion of choice that we didn’t notice when we were asked to give it all up in an instant.
It’s Time for Left and Right to Unite By Naomi Wolf. More than our sense of self politically is the importance of reflecting on how we can be of service to our country. The same is true for these candidates as well. They both have something to offer this country; so let us utilize them both. And I hope they both look within themselves as well, to remove any sense of a personal ideal that may stand in the way of a unique opportunity to serve all Americans; I hope that the ‘perfect’ won’t stand in the way of ‘the good’ of actually saving our nation.