Vindicated: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Regrets Collusion with Government on CovidJUSTIN HARTAUG 27 READ IN APP Mark Zuckerberg’s August 26, 2024, letter to Congress offers a long-awaited acknowledgment of what many of us at Rational Ground—and across the nation—have known all along: Facebook was an active participant in the systematic censorship of American voices during the COVID pandemic.Rational Ground by Justin Hart is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Upgrade to paidIn his letter to Chairman Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg admits that “government pressure was wrong” and expresses regret for not being “more outspoken about it” at the time.
Vindicated: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Regrets Collusion with Government on CovidJUSTIN HARTAUG 27 Mark Zuckerberg’s August 26, 2024, letter to Congress offers a long-awaited acknowledgment of what many of us at Rational Ground—and across the nation—have known all along: Facebook was an active participant in the systematic censorship of American voices during the COVID pandemic.Rational Ground by Justin Hart is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Upgrade to paidIn his letter to Chairman Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg admits that “government pressure was wrong” and expresses regret for not being “more outspoken about it” at the time.
“It Ain’t Over”Freedom activists are critical thinkers!
Our society is so dumbed down and indoctrinated that anyone who is a critical thinker is labeled as a Conspiracy Theorist
Did you know: The term ‘conspiracy theorist’ was first coined and used by the CIA to ridicule anyone who opposed the gov’t narrative?
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Kelowna Courts
Falsified assault charge
Kelowna Courthouse
R v David Lindsay s. 266 Criminal Code Assault
Next Provincial Court Hearing Date:
August 9, 2024
2:00 p.m.
Thank you for all your support and belief for freedom!!
Remember the Freedom Principle:
An attack against one is an attack against all.
An attack against all, is an attack against one.
Update on July 10, hearing
I would again very much like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to everyone for all your kind support over the past week, and even ongoing. The amount of support was really overwhelming.
I appeared in court last week and this new date of August 9, 2024 was set for hearing of the sentencing judgment.
Next Supreme Court Appeal
Hearing Date:
September 9, 2024 — 10:00 a.m.
Notice of Conviction Appeal
Hearing
This hearing date was set on Monday, July 22. It was once again set over to Sept. 9 to set the agenda for the hearing of the appeal from the conviction and sentence of J. Heinrichs.
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City of Kelowna v David Lindsay et al
Petition to Stop Rallies
Week of September 3, 2024 10:00 a.m.
1355 Water St.
Kelowna Courthouse
for hearing on my SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) application to strike the City’s Petition against us. (See the B.C. Protection of Public Participation Act)
We had one day before the Hon. Justice Hardwick. The remaining two days were canceled apparently due to the judge either being ill or otherwise not available to appear.
There has now been a further three days set aside during the week of Sept. 3, 2024 for the continuation of this hearing. I will be notified on the Friday, Aug. 30, 2024 of what days this will be. Considering that Monday, Sept. 2 is Labour Day, it appears we will be heard starting Tuesday or Wednesday of that week.
Our documents in this case are located on our website at:
Please remember other innocent people who have stood up for our rights and freedoms against our tyrannical governments during COVID-19 and to the present, who are now in the midst of their ongoing, oppressive trials:
Tamara Lich
Chris Barber
The Coutts prisoners: Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert
Pat King
and many other real victims.
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Empower Hour
Every Wednesday Action4Canada hosts the Empower Hour, an online zoom meeting open to everyone. We have a special guest each week, who will educate, inform and answer your burning questions. Also, watch the Weekly Updates HERE.
To be kept informed of these webinars sign up for our Email Updates so as to receive advance notification along with details on how to pre-register for each Empower Hour webinar.
Join us! Share this page and link with your friends and social media!
Know Your Rights:
Guidelines for Peaceful Protesting/Gathering/Rallies and/or Attending Events (eg. Council Meetings, School Boards, Handing out Flyers)
Check out A4C for some of the most successful actions and strategies available to us!
And a big thank you to Tanya for all her hard work and dedication and support for the Christian principles that founded our nation!
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CLEARBITS:
Lawrence Greenspon,
the same lawyer representing Tamara Lich in the prosecution against her, is now also representing Ottawa Councillor Matthew Luloff, who viciously opposed the convoy and issued repeated pejorative name calling against us, in charges against him of impaired driving. I would think morals would dictate that you would not be helping an enemy in another case you are involved in. But this is why lawyers have such an ongoing bad name.
Former Pfizer VP: Why evidence is lacking for the existence of COVID-19 ‘virus’ or any other
Joining his voice with many other scientists, Dr. Michael Yeadon argues that not only does the COVID-19 virus not exist, neither do viruses in general, which means there was no pandemic but instead a coordinated ‘long planned attack’ upon civilians.
That’s my official Thoughtcrime Case Number, which my attorney needs to reference in all our official correspondence with the New Normal Thoughtpolice. I think I’m going to silk-screen it on a T-shirt and wear it on my first day in Moabit Criminal Court, “the largest criminal court in Europe with 340 judges and 360 prosecutors.”
That’s right, the Berlin State Prosecutor’s office is pursuing its criminal investigation of me for allegedly “disseminating propaganda, the content of which is intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” which according to Germany’s Grundgesetz could send me to prison for up to three years.
My attorney wrote to them and politely explained how ridiculous their investigation is and why they should summarily drop the charges, but New Normal Germany has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to Thoughtcrime, especially Thoughtcrime involving any kind of Covid-denying propaganda.
The “propaganda” in question is these two Tweets.
Which, OK, I just disseminated them again, so there’s another three years in prison. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s six years in prison, i.e., three years for each separate count of Thoughtcrime.
I wrote those Tweets in German, so let me translate.
The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The hashtag translates as “Masks are not a benign measure.”
The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of Germany, tweeted by Die Welt, a national newspaper. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.” And, yes, Karl, that’s exactly the point I was making.
My attorney just received the screenshots of these Tweets from the Berlin State Prosecutor a few days ago. Up to then, we didn’t know what they were, and we couldn’t find them, because they have been censored by Twitter, presumably on the orders of the German Thoughtpolice. We knew they featured the cover art of my book, because the Prosecutor’s office described it, but we didn’t know about the “Covid denial.”
So, essentially, I’m facing criminal charges, and being threatened with who knows how many years in prison, or thousands of Eurodollars in fines, for (a) stating what has now been widely acknowledged, and what was generally understood by every serious epidemiologist until the Spring of 2020, namely, that mask-mandates do not work, and thus are nothing but symbolic measures designed to generate and enforce mass obedience, and (b) insulting the Minister of Health of Germany, who happens to be a fanatical serial liar who is directly responsible for the serious injury and death of … well, we’ll never know how many people.
Neither of which are actual crimes. Not even in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Incidentally, my book has also been a bestseller, at least on Amazon (in countries where it’s not banned) and Barnes & Noble, but I’ve still got a little ways to go before I get to Shirer territory.
So, there you are … those are my Thoughtcrimes.
I’ve been writing about the “New Normal” as a new form of totalitarianism for several years now. I wrote about it in one of my essays, The Criminalization of Dissent, in May of 2021. Some of my colleagues rolled their eyes. They thought I was being hyperbolic again. I wasn’t. This is what I meant. It is literally the criminalization of dissent.
I wasn’t the only one covering the story of the criminalization of dissent in Germany. The New York Times reported on it in April of 2021 …
“For intelligence officers to be legally allowed to start observing parts of the anti-lockdown movement, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) had to create an entirely new category of groups because the ‘Querdenkers’ do not fit neatly into the existing classifications of right-wing or left-wing. The new category is for groups suspected of being ‘anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security.’ The designation allows intelligence officers to gather data about individuals and their activities, and could in a further step include shadowing people and tapping their communications.” (German Spy Agency to Monitor Some Anti-Lockdown Protesters)
I was not a member of the “Querdenker” movement, or any other movement for that matter, but I doubt that makes any difference to the BfV or the Berlin State Prosecutor. Anyone even vaguely prominent who spoke out against the “Corona measures” is fair game for threats and prosecution. The beneficent-sounding Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV, is basically Germany’s FBI. It’s now two years after the above stories were published, and they are still on the hunt for “Covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and other such persons suspected of “delegitimizing the state” … whatever that Orwellian language means.
Of course, it doesn’t matter what it means. It means whatever they say it means. That’s what it means. It means it doesn’t mean anything, and they do not have to pretend it means anything. It means, “Shut the fuck up. Get in line. Do what we tell you. Say what we tell you. Think what we tell you. Or we will fucking get you. We will make up some charges and prosecute you. We will censor you into Internet oblivion. We will shut off your fucking bank account. We’ll send the IRS to your house. We’ll ruin your career. We’ll hurt your family. We will extradite you to the USA and lock you up in Supermax prison for 175 fucking years.”
Oh, and also, I should probably mention, my lawyer advised me not to republish those Tweets. He completely understands where I am coming from, but it is his job to look out for me and to try his best to … you know, keep me out of German prison, which I’m not making easy for him.
Now, I want to be very clear about this. I have no desire to go to German prison. I am about to turn 62 years old. I’m not at all interested in tossing anyone’s salad or having my salad tossed by anyone, especially not a pumped-up, tattooed member of some local Turkish drug gang, or an actual German neo-Nazi, but I’m not going to be intimidated into shutting up or toning my act down to placate the New Normal Thoughtpolice.
The thing is, I don’t respond well to bullies. I feel a particular antipathy toward them. I’m not very fond of liars either. And totalitarians … there’s another group of people I don’t like. I am not ashamed to admit my bias against such people. I wish them ill. I am sorry about whatever vicissitudes of fortune or experience turned them into lying, bullying, totalitarian creeps, but they can suck foul wind out of my ass if they think I am going to bow down to them. They can do what they want to me. They have that power. They can silence me for a while if they want. But they cannot make me silence myself.
And they cannot make me pretend to respect them.
The Germans are real big on respecting authority. So am I. But authority is earned. It does not stem from a title or a uniform. It stems from knowledge, experience, integrity, and honorable behavior, not from brute force. Fascists, totalitarians, and the like do not deserve our respect. They deserve our scorn. They deserve our derision. I have plenty of it for them.
Also, there are the kids to think about. I don’t have any, but other people do. What kind of an example are we setting for the kids if we start censoring (or “sensitivity-editing”) ourselves every time some fascist bully threatens to put us in jail if we don’t? A lot of the young people are already pretty pussified as it is these days. I’m certainly not a tough guy or anything, but sometimes, in life, you have to fight, and it doesn’t really matter if you get your ass kicked.
Oh, and, if you’re contemplating writing to me and telling me to “get the hell out of Germany” or inquiring as to why I haven’t “gotten the hell out of Germany,” please do not do that. I am extremely tired of hearing it. Instead, just wire a high six-figure sum into the Swiss account I will be setting up shortly, and, I promise you, I’ll get the hell out of Germany, and send you a postcard from an undisclosed location somewhere in the Ionian Sea.
In the meantime, I’ll definitely keep you posted on Case 231Js1736/23, and maybe I’ll go ahead and do up that T-shirt. Wait, what am I thinking? This is New Normal Berlin! I could find a VC, round up some 20-year-old, transgender, Ayahuasca-guzzling tech bros (or “tech persons with penises” or whatever the proper “non-harmful” nomenclature is at the moment), and start up some type of totally Bitcoined bespoke Thoughtcriminal T-shirt business!
The way things are going, I’ll probably make a killing … or at least I’ll be able to cover my legal costs, which, after that last little gratuitous outburst, Lord knows what kind of new charges I’ll be facing!
That’s my official Thoughtcrime Case Number, which my attorney needs to reference in all our official correspondence with the New Normal Thoughtpolice. I think I’m going to silk-screen it on a T-shirt and wear it on my first day in Moabit Criminal Court, “the largest criminal court in Europe with 340 judges and 360 prosecutors.”
That’s right, the Berlin State Prosecutor’s office is pursuing its criminal investigation of me for allegedly “disseminating propaganda, the content of which is intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” which according to Germany’s Grundgesetz could send me to prison for up to three years.
My attorney wrote to them and politely explained how ridiculous their investigation is and why they should summarily drop the charges, but New Normal Germany has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to Thoughtcrime, especially Thoughtcrime involving any kind of Covid-denying propaganda.
The “propaganda” in question is these two Tweets.
Which, OK, I just disseminated them again, so there’s another three years in prison. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s six years in prison, i.e., three years for each separate count of Thoughtcrime.
I wrote those Tweets in German, so let me translate.
The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The hashtag translates as “Masks are not a benign measure.”
The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of Germany, tweeted by Die Welt, a national newspaper. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.” And, yes, Karl, that’s exactly the point I was making.
My attorney just received the screenshots of these Tweets from the Berlin State Prosecutor a few days ago. Up to then, we didn’t know what they were, and we couldn’t find them, because they have been censored by Twitter, presumably on the orders of the German Thoughtpolice. We knew they featured the cover art of my book, because the Prosecutor’s office described it, but we didn’t know about the “Covid denial.”
So, essentially, I’m facing criminal charges, and being threatened with who knows how many years in prison, or thousands of Eurodollars in fines, for (a) stating what has now been widely acknowledged, and what was generally understood by every serious epidemiologist until the Spring of 2020, namely, that mask-mandates do not work, and thus are nothing but symbolic measures designed to generate and enforce mass obedience, and (b) insulting the Minister of Health of Germany, who happens to be a fanatical serial liar who is directly responsible for the serious injury and death of … well, we’ll never know how many people.
Neither of which are actual crimes. Not even in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Incidentally, my book has also been a bestseller, at least on Amazon (in countries where it’s not banned) and Barnes & Noble, but I’ve still got a little ways to go before I get to Shirer territory.
So, there you are … those are my Thoughtcrimes.
I’ve been writing about the “New Normal” as a new form of totalitarianism for several years now. I wrote about it in one of my essays, The Criminalization of Dissent, in May of 2021. Some of my colleagues rolled their eyes. They thought I was being hyperbolic again. I wasn’t. This is what I meant. It is literally the criminalization of dissent.
I wasn’t the only one covering the story of the criminalization of dissent in Germany. The New York Times reported on it in April of 2021 …
“For intelligence officers to be legally allowed to start observing parts of the anti-lockdown movement, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) had to create an entirely new category of groups because the ‘Querdenkers’ do not fit neatly into the existing classifications of right-wing or left-wing. The new category is for groups suspected of being ‘anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security.’ The designation allows intelligence officers to gather data about individuals and their activities, and could in a further step include shadowing people and tapping their communications.” (German Spy Agency to Monitor Some Anti-Lockdown Protesters)
I was not a member of the “Querdenker” movement, or any other movement for that matter, but I doubt that makes any difference to the BfV or the Berlin State Prosecutor. Anyone even vaguely prominent who spoke out against the “Corona measures” is fair game for threats and prosecution. The beneficent-sounding Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV, is basically Germany’s FBI. It’s now two years after the above stories were published, and they are still on the hunt for “Covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and other such persons suspected of “delegitimizing the state” … whatever that Orwellian language means.
Of course, it doesn’t matter what it means. It means whatever they say it means. That’s what it means. It means it doesn’t mean anything, and they do not have to pretend it means anything. It means, “Shut the fuck up. Get in line. Do what we tell you. Say what we tell you. Think what we tell you. Or we will fucking get you. We will make up some charges and prosecute you. We will censor you into Internet oblivion. We will shut off your fucking bank account. We’ll send the IRS to your house. We’ll ruin your career. We’ll hurt your family. We will extradite you to the USA and lock you up in Supermax prison for 175 fucking years.”
Oh, and also, I should probably mention, my lawyer advised me not to republish those Tweets. He completely understands where I am coming from, but it is his job to look out for me and to try his best to … you know, keep me out of German prison, which I’m not making easy for him.
Now, I want to be very clear about this. I have no desire to go to German prison. I am about to turn 62 years old. I’m not at all interested in tossing anyone’s salad or having my salad tossed by anyone, especially not a pumped-up, tattooed member of some local Turkish drug gang, or an actual German neo-Nazi, but I’m not going to be intimidated into shutting up or toning my act down to placate the New Normal Thoughtpolice.
The thing is, I don’t respond well to bullies. I feel a particular antipathy toward them. I’m not very fond of liars either. And totalitarians … there’s another group of people I don’t like. I am not ashamed to admit my bias against such people. I wish them ill. I am sorry about whatever vicissitudes of fortune or experience turned them into lying, bullying, totalitarian creeps, but they can suck foul wind out of my ass if they think I am going to bow down to them. They can do what they want to me. They have that power. They can silence me for a while if they want. But they cannot make me silence myself.
And they cannot make me pretend to respect them.
The Germans are real big on respecting authority. So am I. But authority is earned. It does not stem from a title or a uniform. It stems from knowledge, experience, integrity, and honorable behavior, not from brute force. Fascists, totalitarians, and the like do not deserve our respect. They deserve our scorn. They deserve our derision. I have plenty of it for them.
Also, there are the kids to think about. I don’t have any, but other people do. What kind of an example are we setting for the kids if we start censoring (or “sensitivity-editing”) ourselves every time some fascist bully threatens to put us in jail if we don’t? A lot of the young people are already pretty pussified as it is these days. I’m certainly not a tough guy or anything, but sometimes, in life, you have to fight, and it doesn’t really matter if you get your ass kicked.
Oh, and, if you’re contemplating writing to me and telling me to “get the hell out of Germany” or inquiring as to why I haven’t “gotten the hell out of Germany,” please do not do that. I am extremely tired of hearing it. Instead, just wire a high six-figure sum into the Swiss account I will be setting up shortly, and, I promise you, I’ll get the hell out of Germany, and send you a postcard from an undisclosed location somewhere in the Ionian Sea.
In the meantime, I’ll definitely keep you posted on Case 231Js1736/23, and maybe I’ll go ahead and do up that T-shirt. Wait, what am I thinking? This is New Normal Berlin! I could find a VC, round up some 20-year-old, transgender, Ayahuasca-guzzling tech bros (or “tech persons with penises” or whatever the proper “non-harmful” nomenclature is at the moment), and start up some type of totally Bitcoined bespoke Thoughtcriminal T-shirt business!
The way things are going, I’ll probably make a killing … or at least I’ll be able to cover my legal costs, which, after that last little gratuitous outburst, Lord knows what kind of new charges I’ll be facing!
Freedom Protests Outside the B.C. Legislature — A Report by Gordon Watson
01 We’ve been bearing witness against the HOAX for two and a half years since the SCAMdemic blew in. December 03 2022 was bright overcast, 42 degrees F with a chill wind blowing across the lawn of the Leg. As usual on Saturdays, our group was there, providing emotional support to folks dismayed by the official insanity. Regardless of the weather, it’s a sort of a party from noon to 3 pm or so.
02 Passersby honk and wave and walk up to thank us — evidence that the nation is coming to its senses. Hearing “God Bless you for being here” face to face tells us that, as small a thing as it is, what we do is important. An occasional smirking snipe of “you guys are nuts” is just water off our backs.
03 Asserting Freedom of the Press is very important. From time spent on the frontline of the anti-abortion fray [ 3 decades ago] I know that the printed word lasts. It cannot be censored completely; it winds up in places you would never guess. We’ve put thousands of copies of DRUTHERS ; PANDEMIC PAPERS and COMMON GROUND magazine in the hands of real people.
04 The 600 block Belleville Street in little Victoria is apparently clean and safe, what remains of traditional White, Christian lawabiding. Yet, it is a spiritual battleground at the very Gates of the City. The studied ignorance of the herd in the most irreligious city in Canada was demonstrated December 10. Bright sunshine 50 degrees F. with 25 warm bodies gathered. A male about 19 years old stopped in front of our gathering, saying “I’m so glad you guys are out here protesting for our right to take vaccines”. In the moment before it dawned on me that he was mocking, I held out a newspaper, saying “here’s some information you need” He refused, sneering: “I know all about it”. To which I countered: “Obviously you don’t. People are dropping dead all over the world from the poisoned needle. It could happen to you.” He shot back “I hope it will” direct quote. As he scuttled away I shouted: “You just pronounced a curse on yourself” Minutes later, a man who goes by each week unloaded his venom. Unfazed, my Christian friend let loose a volley of precise rebuttal. Amused, I said, “and here I thought you were such a nice girl!” No, the naysayers don’t stick around to dialogue. Rather, many of them die suddenly, out of the public eye. Cause of death un-reported by the “legacy media”. They don’t come back and admit “anti-vaxxers” have been right all along. As my mentor old Georgie Gordon used to say: “God’s fingerprints are all over this” Kidding her, I cited Second Thessalonians 1:6 “seeing it is a righteous thing with God, to recompense tribulation to those who trouble you.”
05 The avalanche of information via the Internet, requires winnowing down. Eleven minutes of Gerard Rennick scolding Senators in Australia. Irrefutable, proving they were not just derelict in their duty, but that they are complicit in Crimes against Humanity. Watching him point the prosecutorial finger pronouncing “Shame on you !” is highly entertaining. I urge you to find this video. It’s on his FaceBook page, farther down a bit. At this stage, demanding accountability is seen as “the Ministry of Condemnation”. The Ministry of Reconciliation comes later.
06 Two weeks ago, MP Laurel Collins was the premier speaker at the protest convened around the Cenotaph, by Iranians protesting diktatorship in their country. When Collins proclaimed that she and her government ‘stood with them fighting for Freedom!’ I blasted her in my parade-square voice. Below, see my letter which the Editor of the James Bay Beacon couldn’t find space to print
Gordon S Watson
Metchosin British Columbia December 11 2022 A. D.
…………………
To ; the Editor
James Bay Beacon newspaper
One of the perks of living in James Bay, is, being able to drop in to the continuing master class in political science, convened weekly on the precinct of the Legislature.
Last Saturday was especially edifying. A couple hundred people encircled the Cenotaph to protest against the regime in Iran. Atop that column is a figure in the uniform of Canadian soldiers circa 1914 to 1918, when my grandfather fought at Ypres. At its base is a plaque commemorating the Korean War in which my old man got blown up in jeep. He survived. His three fellow soldiers didn’t. My mother served in the Canadian Army nursing sisters. Not to mention many aunts and uncles. So, my family has payed the price in blood, sweat and tears for our citizenship.
Immediately beside the Cenotaph, my friends and I have asserted our right to freedom of association … gathering every week to warn and inform everyone who will listen, against the Covid-iocy , for nigh-on 2 ½ years, on Belleville Street. As their event got started, a couple of us went over and politely remonstrated with the leader of the Iranians … advising that they were treading on ground which is all-but sacred to those of us who have British military traditions. Our concern was blown off with the excuse that they “had a permit”.
The Star of their Show, Member of Parliament Laurel Collins, started in pontificating about “Freedom”. She being one of the members of the House of Commons who endorsed the Emergency Act, which put the Dominion du Canada in a police state – the contradiction was too galling for me to stay silent. I exercised my right to speak. Telling her loudly that, rather than concerning herself with dictatorship halfway ‘round the planet, she can start right here. One of the Iranians came up and put his fist beside my face pronouncing he would “take me out”. Then grabbed me. When I got out my camera to take a photo of him, in order to identify him, so as to lay a criminal charge, the thug made himself scarce.
My points being: a more egregious personification of an hypocrite than MP Collins would be hard to find ; and, Freedom of Speech belongs to those who practice it.
Gordon S Watson
Metchosin British Columbia November 20th 2022 A. D.
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Don Mclean, American Pie
It is very hard to maintain one’s composure when speaking to ordinary Canadians about the disaster in the making that is Canada today. I have engaged personally and via email over the last two years with literally hundreds of my fellow countrymen from all walks of life on the subjects of the national debt, the deficit, the sunsetting of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the draconian and illegal Covid and vaccine mandates and the turbo maladies that flow from them, the various repressive bills sieving through Parliament, the vicious and lying government and media campaign against the Trucker Freedom Convoy, and the unconscionable behavior of the most vindictive, incompetent and unpatriotic prime minister in the history of Confederation.
With precious few exceptions—“precious” is a key word here—I have come away in a state of profound depression. Some readers of my writings as well as everyday interlocutors have accused me of pessimism, which may be true. I recall a remark of Leonard Cohen’s: “A pessimist is somebody who is waiting for the rain. Me, I’m already wet.” Sometimes I feel completely drenched.
I’ve found the great majority of my correspondents do not know the difference between the debt and the deficit. They draw a blank when I mention the Charter or the Nuremberg Code, let alone Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum, and the Great Reset. None have researched the deception or willful ignorance among our politicians regarding the Covid mandates and not one has examined the harmful and even lethal nature of the vaccines and booster shots. None I’ve spoken to have even heard of SADS—Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, which emerged post-vaccine.
Bills like C-4, C-11, C-12 and C-18, which are dictatorial measures designed to muzzle and censor the average citizen, are little more than arcana unworthy of consideration. Most people are indifferent to, or approving of, the push for legislated mask mandates, “a result of a compliant populace,” Cory Morgan writes, “willing to shrug their shoulders and give up personal liberties with little complaint.” The government and medical profession’s targeting of parents who resist the sickness of transgenderitis in order to provide a normal life for their children does not appear to move many Canadians.
For the most part, they are not clear on the frivolous invocation of the Emergencies Act and tend to agree that the government was right in acting against the peaceful and legitimate truckers’ demonstration, to freeze bank accounts and to imprison Convoy organizers on the flimsiest of pretexts.
Nor are they aware that Canada’s chief justice, Richard Wagner, a Trudeau appointee, has violated the principle of judicial neutrality in condemning the trucker protest, thereby putting himself, so to speak, out of court. They have taken the false flag operations against the truckers at face value and naïvely fall for the profusion of spurious Internet “fact-checks” demonizing the convoy—those “typical blue-collar folk, doing real work for a living,” writes Rex Murphy, “a representative group of Canadian citizens with relevant and pressing concerns.”
Nor are they familiar with the Liberal finessing of the related Commission of Inquiry. Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller, for example, was removed from the Inquiry after asking embarrassing questions of the government and objecting to its redacted documents. And as expected, the hearing ended with the government presenting no relevant information, justifying its position, and relying on what Director of the National Citizens Coalition Alexander Brown wittily called, adapting a famous phrase from Hannah Arendt, “the banality of bureaucratic abuse.” The entire operation was an exercise in futility.
They do not know that Justin Trudeau has bought off the press with handsome tax rebates and emoluments, and most have declared their intention to vote for him again. Rampant inflation is laid at the door of Vladimir Putin rather than at Trudeau’s reckless economic policies, energy shutdowns, pandemic over-spending, skyrocketing carbon taxes, anti-farming animus, and record borrowing. They believe in the canard of global warming and they are still convinced that the unvaccinated are viral shedders, though we now know that the vaccinated are the major transmitters. And they are proud to be Canadians, “the best country on earth,” as all too many have proclaimed.
Aspects of what I regard as citizen failure are, of course, to be found almost everywhere, but rarely to the extent that we observe here. Ontario MPP Joel Harden put it in a nutshell on Canada’s Remembrance Day, November 11: “The most formidable check on all politicians are active and engaged citizens who are the lifeblood of any democracy.” We still have our heroes, but they are a visibly shrinking minority. The lifeblood is seeping away. In the words of John Mac Ghlionn at The Epoch Times, “the environment that Trudeau and his colleagues have created [is] one steeped in paranoia and suspicion. They have managed to turn a once respectable country into a surveillance state.”
In some respects Canada under Trudeau is gradually becoming a vassal state.
In thrall to the globalist agenda, Ottawa will introduce legislation to achieve net-zero GHG (greenhouse gasses), at a prohibitive cost to both energy and agricultural production. Yet, according to government statistics, Canada generates merely 1.5 percent of global GHG emissions. Needlessly decarbonizing the productive sector will eventually impoverish the country, as it did Sri Lanka, which seems increasingly to be the prime minister’s ambition. (The fascinating theory of abiotic oil, of course, is dismissed out of hand.)
Another of the scandals we are presently facing is called MAID or Medical Assistance in Dying. This new euthanasia program, which the World Medical Journal describes as “normalizing death as ‘treatment’ in Canada,” is affecting not only the disabled but the elderly, the poor and the homeless as well. Euthanasia, as Stephen Green writes in PJ Media, “the weeding out of undesirables by official means, has been a tenet of progressive ideology from the very beginning,” a system that “encourage[es] suicide over treatment.”
Canada has become the contemporary poster boy for this outrageous regime. Put bluntly, people who no longer recognize the country they grew up in have only two options: to leave or to die.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that Canadians are abandoning the countryin ever-growing numbers. Remaining in Canada depends on whether one considers it to be politically salvageable. For those who have settled elsewhere, the answer is a clear No. For these emigrants, this is not a question of weakness or moral defeat but of simple clarity. It can be said, to adopt George Grant’s injunction, that they are living with courage, for it takes courage to leave everything behind and begin anew in unfamiliar surroundings. They have taken the measure of the situation and do not expect a supine and stupefied citizen body to awaken to the reality of its condition.
Canada is now an immigrant-ridden and fissiparous country, the majority of its people wallowing in obliviousness and proud, it would seem, of their deference to authoritarian dictate. Perhaps the only solution, if there is one, is prairie secession, the goal of the Wexit movement, which appears to be gathering some momentum. The prairie provinces would make a viable and prosperous independent country. Admittedly, it’s a long shot, but discontent is mounting.
Whether or not the movement prospers, there are encouraging signs of pushback against federal government ordinances. The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in particular have served notice they intend to resist Trudeau’s energy policies, the threat of a digital ID rollout, and the likelihood of renewed vaccine mandates and passports. Once the energy and agricultural backbone of the nation, and presently under the enlightened leadership of Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, respectively, these two provinces currently represent a silver lining in a massively dark cloud.
But one thing should be obvious by now: we cannot go back to the status quo ante. The levee is dry.
David Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist. His most recent volume of poetry, The Herb Garden, appeared in 2018 with Guernica Editions. His manifesto, Reflections on Music, Poetry & Politics, was released by Shomron Press in 2016. He has produced two CDs of original songs: Blood Guitar and Other Tales and Partial to Cain on which he was accompanied by his pianist wife Janice Fiamengo. His latest book is Notes from a Derelict Culture, Black House, London, 2019.
Persecuted Professor & COVID Dissident Sues Queen’s University & Dr. Stephen Archer for $600,000 For “Malicious, Aggressive, Condescending & Defamatory” Statements
Haldimand-Norfolk top doc alleges ‘relentless harassment’ in lawsuit against former employer
Dr. Matt Strauss claims his public criticism of COVID-19 health measures led to a hostile work environment
By J.P. AntonacciLocal Journalism Initiative ReporterSat., Nov. 12, 2022timer3 min. read
Haldimand-Norfolk’s top doctor is suing his former employer.
As first reported by CBC News, acting medical officer of health Dr. Matt Strauss is seeking more than $600,000 in damages and lost wages from Queen’s University and Dr. Stephen Archer, head of the school’s department of medicine.
Archer was Strauss’s direct supervisor when he was an assistant professor of medicine at Queen’s from July 2019 to November 2021, at which time Strauss also practiced internal medicine and worked in the ICU at Kingston General Hospital.
In a statement of claim filed on Oct. 20, Strauss alleges that his time at Queen’s was marked by “consistent and relentless harassment … humiliation and belittlement” by Archer and other Queen’s employees — motivated, Strauss claims, by his public criticism of lockdowns and other health measures implemented in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Strauss claims the “malicious, aggressive, condescending and defamatory statements” levelled by Archer in emails and letters to Strauss and his colleagues damaged his reputation and forced him to resign due to the hostile work environment.
Archer’s criticisms of Strauss’s COVID-related newspaper columns and tweets caused Strauss to “become upset and anxious,” according to the claim.
None of the allegations in the claim have been tested in court. A statement of defence has not yet been filed.
“I am not sure how the CBC became aware of a recent court filing issued by my lawyer,” Strauss posted to Twitter Thursday evening.
“It is my strong preference that this matter remain between the parties involved. Therefore, I will not be providing any comment about this case.
“That said, I am a firm believer in academic freedom, particularly on matters of significant public interest. I will continue to advocate for this principle in my public commentary.”
In response to a request for comment sent to the university and Archer, the university said it was “aware of the statement of claim filed with the court.”
“The university has not been served with the claim and therefore has not filed, nor been required to file a statement of defence. As such, the claim represents only the plaintiff’s perspective,” the statement read.
“As this is a Human Resources matter, the university will not be commenting further.”
Archer did not respond directly to the request for comment.
According to the publicly available court filing, Archer accused Dr. Strauss of “grabbing headlines for the wrong reasons.”
“You were hired to be a physician not a publicist,” Archer allegedly told him in a December 2020 email included in the statement of claim, adding he was “very concerned about your maturity and professionalism and believe your professed love of freedom of expression is more self centered than in service of our patients or trainees.”
Strauss said his superior defamed him by suggesting he was “promulgating false information and not caring about the health of the public” while “seeding mistrust for public health institutions” through “dangerous and misleading” public comments.
Archer’s public censure of Strauss’s activities came despite what Strauss claims was an “entirely positive” annual performance review in March 2021.
Strauss said Archer targeted him in part because he had signed the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter published in October 2020 calling for people at least risk of adverse affects from COVID-19 to be allowed to live with few public health restrictions in order to encourage the development of herd immunity.
Archer published a five-point refutation of the Great Barrington Declaration on the university’s website in the following month.
Strauss contends the “eight months of harassment” he allegedly experienced at Queen’s was a calculated campaign by Archer to get him to quit his job. After raising objections regarding how he was being treated, Strauss claims Archer informed him in June 2021 his contract would not be renewed after it came to an end the following year.
Strauss argues that left him with no choice but to leave the university in November 2021, with more than seven months left on his contract.
That September Strauss was hired as acting medical officer of health in Haldimand-Norfolk.
The lawsuit seeks at least $600,000 in damages — including half a million for defamation — along with wages and benefits lost due to what Strauss’ filing describes as his “constructive dismissal.”
Strauss also wants the university to delete what he considers defamatory statements made about him by Queen’s staff from any university platform and prevent their further dissemination.
Independent Ontario MPP Roman Babar Runs Ads to Expose the COVID Lies, Failures & Misinformation of the Doug Ford Gov’t
Doug Ford tried to distract Ontarians from his own failures by offering us more crumbs in a sleight of hand. Instead of allowing restrictions to expire on January 26, he extended them to January 31 and announced a “slow and cautious opening”. Doug is not fooling anymore, instead he got caught trying to save himself politically.
By the Government’s measures, Ontario’s hospitals are in worse shape today than they were in October 2021. There is less hospital staff now than in March 2020. If Doug stuck to the illusion that we must lock down to protect hospital capacity, then he would not announce any reopening at this time. Instead, he knows where the wind is blowing and is trying to save his political career.
On Wednesday, the Minister of Health, Christine Elliott, threatened some Ontario’s Physicians for allegedly spreading vaccine misinformation. Understanding of the Covid vaccines is an evolving scientific matter. One could have been accused of misinformation by suggesting that the risk of the Astra Zeneca vaccine was too high due to the risk of blood clots before it was pulled from the market. One could have also been accused of misinformation for suggesting that that Moderna should not be offered to 18-24 year olds before it was no longer recommended by Public Health Ontario for that age group. Threatening professionals for expressing a professional opinion is a chill on speech to be expected of dictatorial regimes. This is an unprecedented territory.
The McDonald Laurier Institute concluded that “other nations managed to maintain hospitalization and death rates at levels comparable to Canada – but without the harsh restrictions and lockdowns.” Read about it in the National Post. We must continue to persuade our friends, family and neighbours that lockdowns caused significantly more harm than any benefit.
One of the greatest harms perpetrated by the Ford Government is the cancellation of elective surgeries. Even independent clinics outside of hospitals were ordered to cancel procedures involving nurses or anesthesiologists. That is despite the fact that the doctors and nurses employed by these clinics were not redirected to hospitals. The extent of Ontario’s healthcare mismanagement as well as the human toll resulting from it is astonishing.
My Constituency Association started an ad blitz. Here is a sample of an ad you could hear on several radio stations (YouTube). It will extend our ad blitz throughout Ontario, as it is imperative that our view point is heard on mainstream media. We ask you to support the ad blitz by donating to the Roman Baber Constituency Association.
Finally, we have reason to be hopeful as several jurisdictions around the world are coming to the conclusion that we must live with Covid. Please continue to share my social media messaging and do not be afraid to speak out about the harms of lockdowns, passports, and mandates. For two years, Ontario’s pandemic response wreaked havoc on Ontarians. But more people are changing their minds and the narrative may soon come to an end.
He wrote a compelling letter when he resigned. Here’s a brief excerpt that everyone in the world should read.Steve KirschJan 11Corporal Richard Mehner, has served in the RCMP for 21 years.He was forced to resign over the vaccine mandate. He penned an excellent letter explaining how he felt.
I wanted to share a snippet with you because it puts everything into perspective: basically, the death rate hasn’t changed at all because people are dying with COVID rather than from COVID.Check this out.At the end of 2020 I became convinced we were all being force fed a giant load of absolute bullshit. Don’t believe me? Look at world population statistics. Here’s a sample.At the end of 2018, the world population was 7,631,091,040 and that year 57,625,149 people died. This showed an overall death rate of .76%. I know some of you are shocked by this, but yes, 57 million people died of all types of causes in 2018. When you reach the end of your life, you die.At the end of 2019, the world population was 7,713,468,100 and 58,394,378 died. Naturally, because we had more people reaching the end of their lives, more people died. The death rate that year was .76%.
Now let’s see what 2020 brought us. The year of the pandemic.At the end of 2020, the world population was 7,794,798,739 and 59,230,795 died. The death rate was .76%. Yes. That’s right. In the year of the deadly pandemic the world’s population grew by 81,330,639 people and the death rate did not change by even a hundredth of a percent. The media never once pulled back the lens to show this, they continued to show the narrow focus of case counts and Covid deaths. Even going so far as to change causes of death so that someone who died “with” Covid in their system was counted as someone who died “of” Covid. The Western world shut down over a disease about as deadly as the common flu. And our rights were shut down along with it.Despite this disease having a non existent effect on the overall death rate of the world’s population the call came out for a mass vaccination.
Anti-vax police officer who compares vaccine mandates to Holocaust resigns
[The latest victim of COVID censorship is a 27-year veteran of he Calgary Police Service, Const. Brian Denison, who publicly criticized imposed vaccines or vaccination mandates. He had been “suspended without pay last month and told he couldn’t speak publicly about a city policy that states officers who aren’t fully vaccinated must submit to regular testing. Governments have used the constantly hyped fear of COVID to bulldoze away many of the rights supposedly guaranteed by the Charter as they impose Medico-Stalinism on Canada. Const. Denison’s comparing to the vaccine apartheid measures adopted by businesses and government to events in National Socialist Germany may be a bit over the top, but, in a free and democratic society, he should have the right to utter an opinion, even if Canada’s vociferous Jewish lobby objects. — Paul Fromm]
21, 2021 • 1 day ago
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A city police officer who has compared COVID-19 vaccination rules to Nazi genocide says he’s resigned from the Calgary Police Service.
Former constable Brian Denison, who was once a member of the service’s hate crimes unit, said he quit the force after being suspended without pay last month and told he couldn’t speak publicly about a city policy that states officers who aren’t fully vaccinated must submit to regular testing.
“I’ve been muzzled by the police service,” Denison told a downtown anti-vax rally on Saturday.
“I turned in my resignation because I could not abide by what they were doing . . . their orders are wrong, do not listen to them.”
CPS on Monday confirmed Denison is no longer employed by the police service.
Denison, who was with CPS for 22 years, called for other officers to follow his example.
“Let me be clear about the CPS — they don’t own you . . . the government doesn’t own you and can’t tell you what you put in your body,” he told the cheering crowd.
In a video he recorded while in uniform in late September, he said society’s widening exclusions of the unvaccinated was headed down a similar path taken by Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
“ Those who are vaccinated, a lot of them, look down on us that are unvaccinated . . . it’s very reminiscent of the world war Hitler was persecuting against the Jews, ” he said. …
On Saturday, Denison said Canadian governments’ COVID-19 vaccination policies show “the correlations are there — what happened in history — and they’re happening again.”
Last month, a leader of the city’s Jewish community said that comparison is grossly inaccurate and offensive, but said he was willing to discuss the issue with Denison.
The Free Market Foundation has presented its very first award to PANDA co-founder Nick Hudson for freedom of expression, decentralisation, and an evolutionary approach. Alec Hogg caught up with Hudson to unpack what the award means to him and the rest of the PANDA team. “It’s been a long, hard struggle and a lot of the people at PANDA have put up with enormous risks and challenges to their livelihoods and careers,” Hudson explains. “So to have this recognition for them I think is particularly welcome and important.” – Claire Badenhorst
It was a delightful surprise, yes, and we had a wonderful evening last night with a fairly lengthy presentation and [I] thoroughly enjoyed it. I think true to their colours, they were looking at the work that PANDA had done and our fight against dogma and a very bigoted version of science, and I think they saw in that something that was consistent with the values of their organisation, and I think it was on that basis that the citation reads as it does and they decided that the members of PANDA deserved the recognition and it was very welcome. You know, it’s been a long, hard struggle and a lot of the people at PANDA have put up with enormous risks and challenges to their livelihoods and careers. So to have this recognition for them I think is particularly welcome and important.
On why people at PANDA are under pressure:
There’s a very strange authoritarian aspect that has infiltrated our academic institutions and public health institutions and this notion of science as an authoritarian concept, as there being such a thing as settled science, as science is something that you should follow, almost a trademarked ‘the science’ kind of concept. And it’s very antithetical to what science is actually about, which is conjecture and criticism, dissent and debate, driving the formation of new knowledge, the creation of new knowledge. It’s in that authoritarian environment where somebody who looks at the data has a different interpretation and sees the world differently from the average person. You know, they’re at risk of being cancelled and censured and bullied, really, by these people who are doing something that couldn’t, in any normal world, be described as scientific.
Well, it’s symptomatic of the really weird thinking of a lot of our critics because none of what we have to say is anything to deny the existence of Coronavirus. Our perspective from the beginning has been that the response has been disproportionate and later on the response has actually worsened the situation. So it’s rather strange to attack people who take this perspective and support it with data and quality scientific perspectives and somehow refute it by things getting very bad in a country that has had amongst the most insane policy responses on the planet.
On why he says our policy responses were insane:
We have adopted policies which were already evidently not working in the rest of the world. It didn’t take a lot to look at the emergent data. We did it a year ago. And since then, around 50 papers have been published showing that the stringent restrictions that have been imposed have done nothing. They, of course, have lots of collateral damage involved and they worsen the public health outcomes in that regard but it’s been quite patently clear for more than a year now that lockdowns, which were ruled out by all prior policy guidelines for respiratory virus policies, have indeed been a bad idea and that those guidelines ruled them out for good reason. It’s not a very contentious thing to be saying. The contentious thing to say is that lockdowns are good and that they should continue. That is the novel and unusual thing to be saying and it’s been proven wrong systematically through the entire course of this pandemic. There isn’t a single country’s curve where we can see the beneficial impact or the imposition of restrictions or mask mandates or the detrimental effect of the release of those restrictions or mask mandates. And it’s just been astonishing to me.
You know, when Texas opened up and said, that’s it, no more mask mandates, no more lockdowns, these guys on the other side of the debate called them Neanderthals, predicted disaster and it’s been months now and absolutely nothing has happened. You would think that at some point these pro-lockdown people would start to eat some humble pie and stop encouraging policymakers to enact these restrictions.
On the third wave in Gauteng:
Yeah, it’s a terrible situation. It just wouldn’t be made any better by continuing with mask mandates or going to Level 5 or whatever. I mean, there’s just no evidence for that claim being valid. And, you know, your heart goes out to anybody who’s in that kind of position of having to make these life and death decisions, but I believe very firmly that we’re in this situation precisely because we locked down so hard at the beginning. It would have been much better for us to have pursued the effective strategy of countries like Sweden.
The other thing that’s relevant here and not being talked about enough is that there appears to be a quite high representation among the sick people who are recently vaccinated. And that is not being analysed and discussed enough because that’s another area that is profoundly censored but it’s a conversation that has to be had. We see all around the world resurgences in Coronavirus deaths that coincide with the inception of mass vaccination plans. We have our theories as to what may be causing that and those theories may be wrong but the discussion should be had. Instead, what we get is this blanket silence with no debate happening and everything that we learn has leaked out of official forums and that kind of thing.
On what PANDA stands for:
So we stand for proportionality in response and the importance of conducting cost-benefit analysis before conducting massively impactful restrictions, number one. Number two, we have since the very beginning pointed out that these non-pharmaceutical interventions by and large just haven’t shown any benefit in the data and that the one that held a lot of promise, which was to concentrate on ventilation, especially in hospital and nursing home settings, to reduce the viral titers in the air in their settings was one thing that was really worth paying attention to. That’s only been belatedly acknowledged by the World Health Organisation in the last few weeks. Both the World Health Organisation and the CDC have quietly slipped onto their websites paragraphs saying that, yes, airborne aerosol transmission is an important component of transmission of Coronavirus, and the World Health Organisation for the first time made a nod in the direction of the importance of maintaining good infection control by use of improved ventilation. We’ve been saying that since May last year. Now it gets recognised. Instead, people continue running around doing all the things that they did when WHO initially emphasised fomites and droplet transmission – all the sanitising, all the social distancing stickers, the weird little bits of Plexiglass and so on are still what you see when you walk around. Those are, in our minds, just a completely poor effort in light of the scientific evidence that’s emerged.
On the effectiveness of mask-wearing:
I mean the intuition is, yes, that some percentage of the droplets, the larger droplets would be stopped by a mask – but that’s only a one-stage analysis. The next stage is, once large droplets have been stopped by your mask and you exhale over those droplets, you cause them to turn into aerosols which stay suspended in the air. That’s also not a very difficult intuition to grasp and it’s a better one because it’s consistent with the data, which, as I say and have repeatedly said, is consistent with there being no benefit to a slight harm from the imposition of mask mandates.
I don’t think you should wear a mask. It’s a kind of fantastical idea that viral transmission of respiratory viruses will be stopped by cloth masks. Even the idea that surgical masks are effective is extremely contentious and seems only to be valid to a small degree in the highly controlled settings where the masks are fitted and worn by qualified professionals. There’s modest evidence in favour of those but there’s absolutely nothing to support the effectiveness of cloth masks. The experiments that have supposedly been done to support them are all highly contrived and the European CDC, which did an analysis of the studies that had been conducted, came to the conclusion that all the evidence in favour of mask-wearing was of no evidentiary quality and most of it reflected strong bias. And, you know, you can’t really argue with an analysis like that.
On Covid censorship and the oppression of free speech:
From the start, this whole response to Coronavirus has adopted a decidedly technocratic securicrat surveillance-type tone with oppression of free speech, with all sorts of impositions on liberties and rights that are considered the norm in democratic societies. We’ve been promised time and time again that it was just temporary and that it was two weeks or three weeks or until the vulnerable had been vaccinated or until whatever. The goalposts just keep moving. It should be clear to any thinking person that what we are seeing is an assault on liberal values and it’s not done in the interest of public health. It’s not about a virus.
I think the thing that’s not entering the public discourse nearly enough is the extent to which our institutions of media and public health have been captured by a handful of entities, with the effect that neither the journalists nor the scientists could even speak out if they disagreed with the policies or conventional narratives of the times. And that is just becoming more and more evident by the day. Editorial policy is not free and scientific opinion is not free. So we are entering, I think, very dark times. And this is one of the the hushed-up stories.
There are elements of ideology and culture that I think are the easiest ones to describe. Our universities for decades now have been teaching the completely bogus narrative of postmodernism, of critical theory. This is where wokeness comes from in all its manifestations. This is where safety culture and cancel culture come from. They are fundamentally illiberal ideas. They are fundamentally unscientific ideas. And we can’t get too surprised when we see that our culture is full of people who behave in this fashion. So that’s my starting point, is to talk about ideology. But we also need to look at, as I say, at the influence of some of these super national organisations and the degree to which they have captured our institutions. You cannot find a single mainstream scientist who is not subject to that kind of pressure and who could actually speak out even if they decided that they disagreed with what is being done.
The central question is, why is there no discussion? Why is there no debate? Why are critics of public policy not being engaged with openly and in the public eye? And there are several reasons for this. First of all, there’s this stranglehold that these supernational organisations have, which we’ve already spoken about and secondly, there’s a problem in the culture – an ideological problem – that is antithetical to normal scientific discourse. But thirdly, a lot of these scientists are in very conflicted positions and one of the main reasons they will not entertain debate is they are fully aware that those conflicts will be exposed. So I see it as a three-fold problem that’s very serious and very costly to our society.
On what happens to PANDA next:
We carry on fighting. With every passing day, people come around to our view and begin challenging the narrative that they’ve been fed. They begin seeing that what public health officials all around the world have done is to promote a narrative of fear – fear that causes people to possess a completely distorted perception of risk. The fear is always going in one direction, which is towards overestimating risk and, you know, in those circumstances, it’s terminal to critical thinking and to the ability to make wise decisions and evaluate risk appropriately. So what we see is with every passing day, people wake up one by one and once they’ve woken up, once they come in the direction of open science, in the direction of facts, data and evidence over this very false narrative, it’s an absorptive state. They never turn around and go back into the fear mindset. We don’t see people who have sat down with us and gone through the information in the cold light of day, looking at our perspectives, you know, from a calm and considered perspective, we don’t see those people suddenly waking up the next morning and and wetting the bed. So we believe that that will just continue, that it’s a slow and gradual process of bringing people back to sanity, back to a sense of proportionality and perspective.
I suspect the organisation will remain involved in science rather than gravitate towards politics because it’s not only public health that is subject to this kind of very almost Stalinist approach and culture. I think as we go the frame of reference will expand. The very important thing is that for a lot of the scientists who are involved, many of whom have to be cryptically involved, PANDA represents an absolute lifeline. It connects them back to the science that they first fell in love with and it seems to me that in many ways, PANDA presents the only place to them where they are able to have open debate and discussion with their colleagues, where they’re allowed to be wrong without being shouted at and allowed to learn and change their minds. The scientists appear really to enjoy that. Our weekly open science meetings are now so well attended that we’re thinking of having to break them up into channels. And it’s really a joy to be involved in that because the rest of the week we confronted by this shouty, woke kind of attitude that seems so disconnected from the real world and from the data. So it’s almost as if PANDA has become an oasis for people who love science as opposed to, you know, loving dogma.
On the team at PANDA:
I guess it would be much more depressing if I didn’t have access to such wonderful people and if I wasn’t able to tap the brains of these guys to understand what’s going on. And I mean, the last week was a case to point, again, something not mentioned anywhere in the mainstream media because it runs in the face of the narrative but very big news.
A scientist has managed to uncover the deleted sequences from the database of genetic variants of Covid, which has been a source of great suspicion and head-scratching for us. There was in this database a move taken by a Chinese scientist to delete sequences which he had uploaded. Now, this guy managed to track those sequences back, they were originally up in the cloud and they turned out not to have been entirely deleted. And so he managed to discover these sequences and what they reveal is fascinating because it shines a light on the much larger diversity of the cluster of viruses that you would describe as the SARS viruses. It raises the question that we’ve been saying is suggested by the epidemiological data of whether this virus wasn’t actually around much earlier than the December 2019 Wuhan outbreak. It could quite possibly, based on these phylogenetic trees, have been around for years before and that highlights the craziness of the policies we’ve been pursuing. If it wasn’t even noticed, if there was no epidemic being spoken about, when the cluster of viruses was in broad circulation, then that would really draw the line under efforts to speak of lockdown appropriateness or effectivenes