Lockheed Martin and Volodymyr Zelensky are getting a windfall payday, while the war is artificially extended, more Ukrainian civilians die, and the safety of the American people is endangered as we get closer to open warfare with Russia.
But where are the liberal protestors?
The Democratic Party has voted unanimously to become a co-belligerent in the Russo-Ukrainian War. In eight months, not a single dissenting vote has been cast.
I’m sure most of you remember the liberal protests against George Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
They were big, they were loud, they were sometimes rude. And I can’t vouch for all of their hairstyle choices.
But they were right.
The invasion of Iraq was a criminal enterprise, an unconstitutional war built on lies that decimated a country, killed thousands of American soldiers and upwards of a million Iraqis.
Our nation is still involved in endless wars, not just in Iraq but also Syria, Yemen, and possibly a nuclear showdown with Russia.
Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February, our government has funneled more than $65 billion dollars to the corrupt regime in Kiev and our domestic military-industrial complex.
Lockheed Martin and Volodymyr Zelensky are getting a windfall payday, while the war is artificially extended, more Ukrainian civilians die, and the safety of the American people is endangered as we get closer to open warfare with Russia.
But where are the liberal protestors?
The Democratic Party has voted unanimously to become a co-belligerent in the Russo-Ukrainian War. In eight months, not a single dissenting vote has been cast.
Even during the Iraq War, when the neocons were at the peak of their power in the Republican Party, there were a handful of conservative dissenters like Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee and the great Ron Paul of Texas.
But now, on Capitol Hill it’s been exclusively Republicans standing up against the War Party: Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, etc.
Socialist Bernie Sanders has supported the war.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has stopped scrolling Instagram long enough to support the war.
Ro Khanna, who for years spoke sense on Russian-American relations, has supported the war.
Cori Bush, a signatory to our War Powers Pledge, has supported the war.
There are exceptions—media figures like Jimmy Dore, activist allies like Matthew Hoh, and our progressive Defend the Guard bill sponsors at the state level have all opposed this march to war in Eastern Europe.
But nationally, no Democrat has been willing to stand up to the War Party.
Until last week…when we saw the most embarrassing muzzling I’ve ever witnessed in American politics.
Last Monday, thirty members of the House Progressive Caucus issued a public letter requesting that the Biden administration—in addition to continuing funding of the war—pair that foreign aid for Ukraine with negotiations with Russia.
This milquetoast plea for diplomacy was met with universal hostility by the liberal mainstream media, the Democratic leadership, and the think tankers and Twitter personalities on foreign payrolls.
The lesbian activist Jaimee Michell was notified by PayPal last month that the account of her activist group, Gays Against Groomers, was being immediately canceled due to unspecified rules violations. Moments later, the group — created by gay men and lesbians to oppose attempts by trans activists to teach trans dogma and highly controversial gender ideology to young schoolchildren — was notified that their account with PayPal’s subsidiary, Venmo, was also canceled immediately, leaving them with few options to continue to collect donations.
But Cloudflare’s refusal to capitulate to censorship advocates infuriated NBC News’ Ben Collins — whose primary purpose in life is to agitate for greater and more repressive control over the internet to stifle views that deviate from establishment liberalism — and, along with his NBC colleague and fellow censorship advocate Kat Tenbarge, used the massive corporate platform of NBC News to pressure Cloudflare to obey, claiming Cloudflare’s refusal to censor on command endangers trans people.
Clockwise from top left: UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology speaks during the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Dubai, on March 28, 2022 (Photo by KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images); U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Photo by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images); Google headquarters (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images); The Comcast/NBC Universal building in Los Angeles, CA (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images);
The rapid escalation of online censorship, and increasingly offline censorship, cannot be overstated. The silencing tactic that has most commonly provoked attention and debate is the banning of particular posts or individuals by specific social media platforms. But the censorship regime that has been developed, and which is now rapidly escalating, extends far beyond those relatively limited punishments.
The Consortium of State and Corporate Power
There has been some reporting — by me and others — on the new and utterly fraudulent “disinformation” industry. This newly minted, self-proclaimed expertise, grounded in little more than crude political ideology, claims the right to officially decree what is “true” and “false” for purposes of, among other things, justifying state and corporate censorship of what its “experts” decree to be “disinformation.” The industry is funded by a consortium of a small handful of neoliberal billionaires (George Soros and Pierre Omidyar) along with U.S., British and EU intelligence agencies. These government-and-billionaire-funded “anti-disinformation” groups often masquerade under benign-sounding names: The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, Bellingcat, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. They are designed to cast the appearance of apolitical scholarship, but their only real purpose is to provide a justifying framework to stigmatize, repress and censor any thoughts, views and ideas that dissent from neoliberal establishment orthodoxy. It exists, in other words, to make censorship and other forms of repression appear scientific rather than ideological.
That these groups are funded by the West’s security state, Big Tech, and other assorted politically active billionaires is not speculation or some fevered conspiracy theory. For various legal reasons, they are required to disclose their funders, and these facts about who finances them are therefore based on their own public admissions. So often the financing is funneled through well-established front groups for CIA, the State Department and the U.S. National Security State, such as “National Endowment for Democracy.”
As has always happened with censor-happy tyrants throughout history, the more centers of power inject themselves with the intoxicating rush of silencing their adversaries, the more intense the next hit has to be. Every movement that has wielded censorship as a political weapon tells itself the same story to justify it. In ordinary times, they will casually recite, free speech is a vital value. But these are no ordinary times in which we are living. Our enemies and their ideas are different. They are uniquely hateful, false, inflammatory, and dangerous. The ideas they espouse will destabilize society, cause direct harm to others, deceive people, and incite violence against institutions of authority and their followers. Thus, they reason, we are actually not censoring at all. We are simply preventing evil people from doing harm to society, the government, and to citizens.
Look to any government or society in which censorship prevailed — either today or throughout history. This narrative about why censorship is not just justified but morally necessary is always present. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a censorship supporter. They need to be supplied with a story about why they are something different, or at least why the censorship they are led to support is uniquely justified.
And it works because, in the most warped sense possible, it appeals to reason. If one really believes, as millions of American liberals do, that the U.S. faces two and only two choices — either (1) elect Democrats and ensure they rule or (2) live under a white nationalist fascist dictatorship — then of course such people will believe that media disinformation campaigns, censorship, and other forms of authoritarianism are necessary to ensure Democrats win and their opponents are vanquished. Once that self-glorifying rationale is embraced — our adversaries do not merely disagree with us but cause harm with the expression of their views — then the more suppression, the better. And that is exactly what is happening now.
Criticisms of hapless Senate candidate John Fetterman are labeled “ableist,” while Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter is deemed fascist. Jeff and Bob take a hard look at the linguistic battlefield and the corruption of language as an institution.
Jeff’s paper on language, “Evolution or Corruption?”: Mises.org/HAP367-1
George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language”: Mises.org/HAP367-2
You may remember the name Clifton Duncan from the Tom Woods Show. If not, I’ll tell you a key thing about him at the end.
For now, I’ll tell you this: he has been a very accomplished stage actor, and he is black.
Here’s something he just wrote:
If I were a White Supremacist, I wouldn’t say so publicly.
Instead I’d use the education system, pop culture, and the press to demoralize generations of Black people into a sense of Learned Helplessness, so that their entire lives are spent seeking validation from Whites.
I’d utilize the education system to indoctrinate young Blacks into believing that Whites are so omnipotent that even those who are long dead still exercise influence over their destiny.
This would create an inferiority complex from a young age.
I’d have popular Black celebrities use their massive influence to constantly reinforce the message to their young fans that they’re oppressed, slaves to the caprice and cruelty of Whites.
This would strengthen their inferiority complex.
I’d have journalists frame every story through a racial lens, even where no evidence of racism exists, to stoke Black rage.
I’d lie about officer-involved shootings, for example, further inflaming tensions with cops (which would lead to more shootings…and higher ratings).
I’d also attack Black families, but not overtly. Instead, I’d fund organizations who view Black men and fathers as superfluous, and who want to “deconstruct” the family.
By the way, the founders of such organizations would live in luxury, while everyday Blacks continue to struggle.
Moreover I’d give book deals, Genius Grants, TV hosting gigs, and Pulitzers to bourgeois Blacks, who’d then (despite being examples of Black success) further reinforce notions of Black oppression & White Superiori–pardon, “Supremacy.”
Finally, with all the above pieces in place, I’d easily win votes by convincing thoroughly demoralized Black constituents that I, and only I, can solve the problem of racism…even if my party has been in power for decades, and has done nothing to improve Black lives.
The White Supremacists of today must be much more subtle and sophisticated than the crass, violent Oppressors of the past.
Complete domination and control of the Black mind, and by extension the Black vote, is all that is needed now.
Whips and chains are no longer necessary.
As you can see, he’s a smart and insightful guy.
Here’s what you may not know: they ruined his life over a the Covid shots, which were made mandatory for Broadway actors and which he refused to take.
Duncan was genuinely on his way professionally, getting rave reviews for his performances and having trained in the most prestigious settings in the world.
Now, because of these SOBs, he’s back to waiting tables. A grotesque injustice.
In case you missed it, here’s where he shared his story with me. He is truly a man of principle, and this is one of my favorite Tom Woods Show episodes of all time:
Why do this? Who is the intended victim? Why Wuhan to begin with?
Makes the original bat sandwich story look pretty lame. No one in Washington, except possibly Rand Paul, seems concerned government bungling turned the population into lab rats and crippled world economy…and it is starting again.
Furthermore, this gain-of-function research project is partially funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which has denied its knowledge of these experiments.
According to the preprint paper, the Omicron spike-bearing virus is able to effectively and robustly escape vaccine-induced humoral immunity just like the Omicron variant. In addition, unlike the naturally occurring Omicron variant, the Wuhan-Omi-S chimeric virus efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells.
The creation of a new recombinant COVID-19 virus at Boston University, viewed as a “Frankenstein virus” by many, has raised a public uproar. This is not merely a risky gain-of-function experiment on “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPPs)”, it is a creation of an enhanced pandemic pathogen. NO “potential” here.
What is the rationale for this statement? What is the chimeric virus that we talk about here?
A team of researchers at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories posted a paper on October 14, 2022, on BioRxiv, a preprint server for biology, revealing that they had created a lab-made COVID-19 chimeric virus with reverse genetics technology.
Specifically, they’ve swapped the S gene of the spike protein in the original SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain with the corresponding S gene from the Omicron variant. So, the lab-made Chimeric virus (Wuhan-Omi-S chimeric virus) has all the genes from the Wuhan strain, which is much more pathogenic than the Omicron strain, except the S gene, which is from the highly transmissible yet relatively mildly pathogenic Omicron strain.
According to the preprint paper, the Omicron spike-bearing virus is able to effectively and robustly escape vaccine-induced humoral immunity just like the Omicron variant. In addition, unlike the naturally occurring Omicron variant, the Wuhan-Omi-S chimeric virus efficiently replicates in cell lines and primary-like distal lung cells.
Furthermore, it has killed at least 80 percent of infected K18-hACE2 mice (a type of transgenic mice expressing human ACE2 receptors), whereas the mortality rate of the Omicron variant was zero while the Wuhan strain caused 100 percent death in two weeks in control experiments in the same transgenic mice. This 80 percent mortality in the mice model by the Wuhan-Omi-S chimeric virus was observed in a two-week period. The paper did not provide any further observations on whether the surviving 20 percent of mice eventually died faster than the control mice group infected with Omicron variants.
The defenders for this risky study stated that the chimeric virus product showed reduced pathogenicity (100 versus 80 percent mortality) when compared to Wuhan strains, so it is not a gain-of-function study. However, this is an unjustifiably optimistic statement. The study did not provide any detailed or comprehensive pathology exam of different organs in the transgenic mice infected with the Wuhan-Omi-S virus. For example, do we know that this chimeric virus has the same neuropathogenesis as the Omicron or Wuhan viruses? This study did not provide any data on that.
In addition, although this experiment was presented as a swap of the S gene on the backbone of the Wuhan strain, it could also be viewed as swapping other viral genes on the backbone of the Omicron strain, considering the overall high genome homology among different variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses. Rather than study individual gene motifs that might have influenced the Omicron variant’s pathogenicity, researchers at Boston University instead swapped all the pathogenicity-related viral gene motifs/sites from the Wuhan strain into the Omicron strain.
Then, this study is a bonafide proven gain-of-function study: it makes the Omicron virus obtain more virulent factors, enhancing its infectivity and pathogenicity in in vitro and in vivo experiments. And this publication did not reveal any study to test the transmissibility of the chimeric lab-made virus in animal models. Is the Wuhan-Omi-S virus more or less transmissible in animal models? Can any of the researchers in this study 100 percent guarantee that this new chimeric virus is not more transmissible in different animal models, e.g. golden hamsters, ferrets, and primates?
This study presented the main conclusion: “while the vaccine escape of Omicron is defined by 53 mutations in S, major determinants of viral pathogenicity reside outside of S.” However, it is a known fact that other genes outside S are involved in viral-host interactions at different steps of the viral life cycle and many genes outside S are relevant to viral pathogenicity in different tissues, organs, and animal hosts. So, by combining the pathogenicity-related components of the ancestral Wuhan strain and Omicron’s spike protein, the researchers would surely expect to create a virus that’s both highly deadly and highly transmissible. Even though it might be lucky that the final chimeric virus strains are less deadly and/or less transmissible than the Wuhan and/or Omicron strains, there is no guarantee that the degree of the risks or threats cannot be precisely controlled or assessed. The researchers at Boston University are intentionally playing with fire with clear knowledge of the risks involved.
So, in essence, Boston University researchers created a lab-made Omicron variant with enhanced pathogenicity. As Omicron is a clear pandemic pathogen, taking over Delta and other COVID-19 virus variants, this study has created an enhanced pandemic pathogen. Not an “enhanced pandemic potential pathogen.”
It is true that we don’t know whether this lab-made chimeric virus can out-compete natural omicron variants when co-circulating in human society. And defenders of this gain-of-function study also argued that similar recombinant variants existed early this year, the Deltacron, which contains a Delta variant backbone with an Omicron S gene. They argued that the Deltacron did not generate a pandemic wave and was quickly replaced with Omicron variants, and therefore, this experiment at Boston University did not generate additional risk. So, are these defenders arguing that humankind was simply too lucky and we need to create additional risks ourselves?
This study is absolutely playing with fire and should be totally forbidden. It is unbelievable that Boston University allowed this research to be carried out. It is an ultimate failure of the bioethics committee that evaluates biomedical research projects at Boston University.
Furthermore, this gain-of-function research project is partially funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which has denied its knowledge of these experiments. As the related grant documents and the communication between Boston University and NIAID are not currently released to the public, it is surely unverifiable whether NIAID was aware of these experiments during the whole process. Nevertheless, it suggests that the oversight mechanism to review grants related to “enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPPs)”, set up by NIAID after the 2014 pause of all gain-of-function studies, did not work at all in this incidence.
Like Christmas and Columbus Day, the left refuse to let a holiday go by without whining and this year once again the war on Halloween continues.
Likely at the insistence of some new school administrator fresh out of a graduate program in women’s studies or whatever, The Daily Bell’s Ben Bartbee reports that “Lower Merion School District cancels Halloween parades over safety, inclusivity concerns,” sacrificing a 50-year tradition at the altar of Social Justice.
Halloween stuff in Lower Merion School District is now replaced with some vague, sterilized abomination called “fall-themed activities,” which are sure to suck the souls out of the schoolchildren.
“eBay has banned the sale of costumes inspired by the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the run-up to Halloween for violating its policy.. Dahmer killed 17 people, predominantly Black men and boys… The company policy states that sellers are banned from listing items that ‘promote or glorify violence’ or are associated with violent individuals, the acts for which they gained notoriety, or crime scenes from the past 100 years.”
In all reality, Jeffrey Dahmer costumes would’ve garnered much less scrutiny if not for two crucial features of his victims: homosexuality and racial diversity. Via Out Magazine:
“Dressing as this real-life killer who tortured and murdered 17 men and boys (many of whom are Black and gay) is… actually a pretty awful idea.”
The whataboutism does get tiresome. But as a matter for the record, we all know that a costume of a serial killer who killed and ate white people would enjoy fairer treatment among the activist community.
But, finally, and perhaps most terrifying for the average American parent, thanks to Washington’s excesses, Halloween is more expensive this year than ever before – thanks to inflation.
MCViewPoint 
