Pfizer, FDA Ask Court to Further Delay Release of COVID Vaccine Safety Data
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 31, 2022
Days prior to today’s scheduled release of a tranche of documents related to the Pfizer COVID vaccine, the pharmaceutical company asked a federal court to let it intervene before any information is released.
It’s the latest development in an ongoing court case that began with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in August 2021 by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT).
PHMPT asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to release all documents related to its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine and full approval of the Pfizer-Comirnaty COVID vaccine.
Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Jan. 6 issued an order requiring the FDA to release 12,000 pages of documents by Jan. 31 and an additional 55,000 pages per month thereafter, until the release of the nearly 400,000 pages of documents is complete.
Pfizer claims to support the disclosure of the documents, but asked to intervene in the case to ensure that information exempt from disclosure will not be “disclosed inappropriately.”
In a memorandum it submitted to the court, Pfizer said it:
“[S]eeks leave to intervene in this action for the limited purpose of ensuring that information exempt from disclosure under FOIA is adequately protected as FDA complies with this Court’s order.”
Attorneys for Pfizer also claimed while it was not asking the court to reconsider the Jan. 6 order, it would consider challenging the order at an unspecified later date, telling the court:
“Pfizer does not presently intend to move the Court to reconsider its January 6, 2022 order, but Pfizer is not in a position at this time to waive its ability to do so if circumstances change such that there is good cause at a later time to do so.”
Pfizer did not clarify what such a change of circumstances might entail.
Lawyers for PHMPT, in a brief submitted Jan. 25 to the court, asked Pittman to reject Pfizer’s motion and requested the judge ask Pfizer to clarify how, exactly, its intervention would help expedite the release of the documents, arguing that Pfizer:
“… provides no reason why it needs to intervene in this matter to render that purported assistance. Nor can Plaintiff discern why Pfizer needs to intervene in this matter to assist the FDA with expediting release of the requested documents—it can render this assistance without intervening.”
PHMPT, a group of more than 30 medical and public health professionals and scientists from institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and UCLA, in September 2021 filed a lawsuit against the FDA when the agency denied its original FOIA request.
In that request, PHMPT asked the FDA to release “all data and information for the Pfizer vaccine,” including safety and effectiveness data, adverse reaction reports, and a list of active and inactive ingredients.
The first batch of documents released in November 2021, which totaled a mere 500 pages, revealed there were more than 1,200 vaccine-related deaths within the first 90 days following the release of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine.
Arguments regarding Pfizer’s motion are scheduled to be heard in court on Jan. 28, though as of this writing, no further updates regarding the case or this scheduled hearing have been publicly disclosed.
Pfizer represented by world’s third-largest law firm
Pfizer on Jan. 21 submitted two filings to the court: a motion to intervene in the case “for a limited purpose,” and an accompanying “memorandum of points and authorities” supporting the motion.
It remains unclear how Pfizer defines “inappropriately” or “for a limited purpose,” or why it waited two weeks after Judge Pittman’s order, and only days before the Jan. 31 scheduled release of 12,000 pages to file its motion.
Pfizer claims it was unaware of the case until executives read news reports about it in December 2021, despite the fact that the case garnered coverage from major news outlets, including Reuters, in November of that year.
Still, the company hired DLA Piper LLP, one of the world’s most high-powered law firms, to represent it. DLA Piper is headquartered in London and maintains offices in 40 countries.
In 2014, the firm had revenues totaling $2.48 billion, making it the third-largest law firm in the U.S. by revenue.
DLA Piper was the 12th largest donor to President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and the 9th largest donor to Hillary Clinton between 1999 and 2018.
Douglas Emhoff, spouse of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, was employed at the firm until 2020, earning $1.2 million in partnership income that year.
FDA supports Pfizer’s motion, requests extension
In a response to Pfizer’s motion, the FDA said it welcomed Pfizer’s “help,” claiming that this is “due to the unprecedented speed with which the Court has ordered [the] FDA to process the records at issue.”
In addition to supporting Pfizer’s motion, the FDA also requested an extension from the court that would further delay the scheduled release of the documents.
Aaron Siri of the Siri & Glimstad law firm, who is representing PHMPT in its lawsuit against the FDA, explained:
“The FDA now insists it must delay its first 55,000-page production until May 1, 2022 – four months after the Court entered its order.
“However, the FDA’s own papers seeking this delay make plain it can produce at a rate of 55,000 pages per month in February and March.”
The FDA claimed Pfizer is entitled to intervene in the case and the process of redacting the documents in question, due to the “Trade Secrets Act,” signed into law by President Obama in 2016, stating:
“FDA anticipates that coordination with Pfizer to obtain the company’s views as to which portions of the records are subject to Exemption 4, the Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1905, or other statutory protections will be a necessary component of the agency’s endeavors to meet the extraordinary exigencies of this case.”
However, according to The Gateway Pundit, the Trade Secrets Act is being misinterpreted by the FDA and Pfizer:
“[T]he protections provided under that law allow for an owner of a trade secret to sue in federal court when its trade secrets have been misappropriated and does not even imply that a company could intervene in a public records request through the FOIA.”
PHMPT, in its Jan. 25 brief, also rejected the FDA’s continued claim that it cannot adhere to the disclosure schedule Pittman ordered on Jan. 6, arguing “the FDA has more than sufficient resources to expeditiously produce the requested documents.”
Siri, on his blog, also questioned this aspect of FDA’s argument, writing:
“The FDA … attests that over the coming weeks, it will have 28.5 full-time people reviewing the documents. Working 7.5 hours per day for 20 business days per month, 28.5 people reviewing 50 pages per hour can review a total of approximately 213,750 pages per month.
“The FDA affirms it has already ‘allocated the equivalent of nearly 11 full-time staff to this project’ and that ‘a review speed of 50 documents per hour was within the normal range for document review in a complex matter’ in private practice; and here the 50 document per hour rate would be faster since there is only a need to review for personally identifying information (‘PII’) for most pages. Hence, if the FDA’s 11 full-time reviewers work only 7.5 hours per day and review 50 pages (not documents) per hour, the FDA could review over 88,000 pages per month in February and March. That is more than sufficient to produce the 55,000 pages per month currently ordered for these two months.”
Instead of complying with this court’s “reasoned order,” Siri Wrote, the FDA claims these 11 reviewers can only review a total of 10,000 pages per month.
What the FDA does not say, and what basic math shows, according to Siri, is that a rate of 10,000 pages a month for 11 full-time reviewers amounts to only 5 pages per hour.
Siri also questioned the FDA’s commitment to transparency and hinted at a cover-up, stating:
“The Court is, other than Congress, the only check on the FDA. In a free country, transparency is paramount, and the FDA has chosen to thwart transparency and the requirements of FOIA by anemically understaffing the office it maintains to respond to FOIA requests.
“It is also incredible for the FDA to claim that compliance here would harm its health policy objectives. Even if the FDA really does need to spend $4 to $5 million which … is an absurd overestimate, that is an inconsequential amount of its overall $3.41 billion discretionary budget.
“It is understandable that the FDA does not want independent scientists to review the documents it relied upon to license Pfizer’s vaccine given that it is not as effective as the FDA originally claimed, does not prevent transmission, does not prevent against certain emerging variants, can cause serious heart inflammation in younger individuals, and has numerous other undisputed safety issues.”
Siri said the FDA’s “potential embarrassment” over its decision to license the Pfizer vaccine must take a back seat to the transparency demanded by FOIA and “the urgent need and interests of the American people to review that licensure data.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
BUY TODAY: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s New Book — ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’
Truckers blockade US-Canada border
Alberta dispatched heavily armed police to break up ‘unlawful’ protest
RT | January 31, 2022
Authorities in the Canadian province of Alberta have dispatched heavily armed police units to disperse the blockade of a border crossing with the US state of Montana by truckers opposed with Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
Scores of Canadian truckers blocked the border crossing between Coutts, Alberta and Sweet Grass, Montana over the weekend, as thousands of their colleagues descended on the Canadian capital of Ottawa to picket the parliament.
On Monday afternoon, surrounded by special units of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the truckers prayed and decided to open one northbound lane for local traffic and let anyone who wishes to leave do so, but voted to stand their ground. One of them vowed the “only way I’m leaving is in a [police] cruiser.”
Police are “not willing to negotiate,” one of the truckers told the outlet Rebel News, adding that by opening a lane, they were technically complying with a provincial law passed in 2020 to crack down on indigenous rights activists.
According to Coutts Mayor Jim Willett, about 100 trucks were blocking Highway 4 on the Canadian side, causing a miles-long backup on Interstate 15 in Montana. About 50-100 trucks have reportedly been stuck on the US side since Saturday.
The blockade is a protest against US and Canadian governments mandating that truckers must be “fully vaccinated” against Covid-19, which came into effect on January 15.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who is in Washington, DC for a meeting of US governors, denounced the blockade on Sunday as “causing significant inconvenience for lawful motorists” and insisted it “must end immediately.”
Kenney, a member of the United Conservative Party, also joined Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – a Liberal – in condemning the “Freedom Convoy” that drove across Canada last week and parked outside the parliament in Ottawa, demanding an end to vaccine mandates.
Trudeau claimed that he will not give in to “those who fly racist flags” or “engage in vandalism or dishonor the memory of our veterans,” insinuating that an unidentified man photographed with a Nazi flag and three protesters who climbed onto the National War Monument disqualified the entire movement.
Kenney has said that the Coutts protest violates the Alberta Traffic Safety Act. Truckers have countered that opening up a lane for local traffic technically makes them compliant with both ATSA and the 2020 Critical Infrastructure Defence Act, passed after indigenous rights activists blockaded railways.
However, Mayor Willett told reporters on Monday morning that the RCMP was “getting impatient.”
Surveys Show That Democrats Can’t Let Covid Go
By Noah Carl | The Daily Sceptic | January 31, 2022
In the early days of the pandemic, when we didn’t have much information, partisan differences in concern about Covid were relatively small. A Gallup poll from February of 2020 found that precisely 35% of U.S. conservatives and 35% of liberals were worried about the pandemic.
Since then, a massive partisan gap has opened up, with Democrats being far more concerned than Republicans. This gap persists to the present day.
While being greatly concerned about the disease was not unreasonable in the spring of 2020, when few people had immunity and excess mortality was high, the situation we face now is dramatically different. All adults have been offered a vaccine, and a significant fraction of the population has natural immunity.
More and more people can see it’s past time we got back to normal. Even one-time ‘Zero Covid’ advocates like Devi Sridhar admit the virus has been “defanged”. But in the U.S., Democrats can’t seem to let Covid go.
Their refusal to face reality is laid bare in two recent surveys: one by Morning Consult, which is summarised in the New York Times; one a join venture of Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute.
Let’s take each one in turn. Here are two headline results from the first survey. Remember, the data were collected in January of this year – mere weeks ago.
83% of Democrats are still concerned about their children getting sick from Covid at school. 83%! This is despite the fact that Covid poses almost no risk to children; indeed, those aged 5–14 are more likely to die in a car accident on their way to school.
As a result of these ungrounded fears, a shocking 65% of Democrats want to go back to remote learning – something that has demonstrably harmed kids’ education, while yielding almost no benefit in terms of reduced transmission.
What about the second survey? Respondents were asked a series of questions about measures that could be taken against the unvaccinated. The results make for alarming reading indeed.
59% of Democrats would support a policy of confining unvaccinated people in their homes “at all times, except for emergencies”. 48% would support a policy to “fine or imprison” those who publicly question the vaccines’ efficacy. And 45% would support a policy of requiring unvaccinated people to live in “designated facilities or locations”.
Of course, polls can’t always be trusted. Yet as Philippe Lemoine observed, “even if we divide each number by 2, this is still completely insane…” Not least because the vaccines, as we’ve known for some time now, don’t stop transmission.
Note: I’m not claiming that Democrats are uniquely irrational; Republicans have plenty of biases and misconceptions of their own. But if after two years, you still don’t get that Covid isn’t a threat to children, I don’t really know what to say.
And make no mistake: what Democrats believe matters. They currently control the White House (in the world’s ‘most powerful country’), and remain disproportionately represented in U.S media and academia, including public health. Once Democrats let Covid go, the rest of us can too.
Do zero deaths in 2 years justify a vaccine mandate?
Apparently so! We live in very strange times, don’t we?
By Steve Kirsch | January 30, 2022
Credit to UCSF Professor Aditi Bhargava for bringing this particular UK FOIA request to my attention. I haven’t seen it anywhere else, so I thought I’d share it with you in case you missed it as well.
The request was:
Please supply deaths caused solely by covid 19, where covid is the only cause of death listed on the death certificate, broken down by age group and gender between feb 2020 up to and including dec 2021.
Here is the most interesting part of the full response which covered nearly two years since the very start of the pandemic: the number of young people in the UK who died solely from COVID:
Your chance of being killed from COVID is basically 0 if you are under 24 years old.
Therefore, based on this data, if you were a policymaker in the US, you’d want to mandate the vaccines for anyone under 24, right?
0 deaths in 2 years, yet vaccines are mandated for young people in schools and universities.
This is how insane these mandates are.
How can 0 deaths justify a state of emergency applied to people under 24? How can it justify mandating a vaccine?
As far as I know, not a single one of the 3,143 public health officials in the US has spoken out against vaccine mandates for people under 24.
FDA math
Want to know how the FDA justifies the vaccines?
Did you ever read the risk-benefit analysis FDA did for 5 to 11 year olds? It was based entirely on assumptions (not data), assumptions of incredible efficacy at preventing all sorts of covid-19 related harms, and on the adverse event side of the ledger, just one single AE (myocarditis). That’s it. No other risks.
And no use of actual data, because trials provided zero data on any of all the endpoints (benefits and harms) that they thought were important.
See PDF p.39 (section 9.5) of the FDA’s EUA memo on 5-11 year olds: https://www.fda.gov/media/153947/download.
Congress totally trusts the FDA no matter how bad their analysis is.
If you want to see a more realistic risk-benefit analysis, see Dr. Toby Rogers’ analysis. Want more proof? Read this article.
A tale of two cities
In the UK now, we have: masks gone, social distancing gone, work from home gone, care home restrictions gone, travel restrictions gone, VACCINE PASSPORTS GONE and the Coronavirus Emergency Act will not be extended.
In Santa Clara County, we have mandated masks, vaccines, etc. for everyone who works for the County.
Same virus, different policymakers.
Dr. Richard Pan introduces bill in California to close the personal belief exemption loophole
The very worst people in my opinion are the policymakers who actively force every last human being to take the jab by eliminating exemptions. For example, Dr. Richard Pan and his California State Senate bill to keep schools safe which is supported by:
- Los Angeles Unified Board President Kelly Gonez
- Los Angeles Unified Interim Superintendent Megan K. Reilly
- San Diego Unified Board Member Richard Barrera
- California Medical Association President Robert E. Wailes, M.D.
Nowhere in that article do you see any mention of a risk-benefit calculation. Never does he mention the number of lives he’s going to save with his bill. Never does he compute the number of deaths. It’s all fear-based policymaking with no math.
Which begs the question: Is there any policymaker with a working brain in the United States of America? Please identify yourself.
We Are All Canadian Truckers Now!
By Ron Paul | January 31, 2022
We all remember where we were when the Berlin Wall came down. While it may have seemed that communist rule would go on forever, when the people decided that they had enough suddenly the wall fell. Just like that.
Thus it is after two years of Covid authoritarianism that in Canada the largest truck convoy in history has smashed through the Berlin Wall of tyranny. I have watched as the Canada I once respected as a haven for antiwar Americans in the 1960s turned into one of the most repressive countries on earth. I wondered how a freedom-loving people could allow themselves to be abused by these mini-Stalins without a peep.
But then Canada stood up and showed the rest of the world that freedom can triumph over tyranny if the people demand it. As I say, no army can stop an idea whose time has come.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau had been basking in his ability to terrorize the population in the name of fighting a virus. He was so confident in his seemingly unlimited power that he felt he could ridicule any Canadian with different views. The prime minister said in a recent interview that unvaccinated Canadians were “extremists,” “misogynists,” and “racists.”
When the Canadian truckers stood up to his tyranny and began their historic convoy to Ottawa, he thought he could continue ridiculing people. The truckers and their supporters were just a “small fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views,” he confidently claimed. For Trudeau, love of liberty is just an “unacceptable view.”
Less than a week later, as tens of thousands of trucks began entering the capital with millions of supporters behind them, the “brave” Canadian prime minister had fled the city and shuffled off to an undisclosed location.
As Elon Musk Tweeted, “It would appear that the so-called ‘fringe minority’ is actually the government.”
The Canadian mainstream media is obviously just as obedient to the regime as ours. They ignored the Freedom Convoy for as long as possible. There was almost no reporting. Then, when it became impossible to ignore, they began to attack and ridicule instead of trying to report it accurately. It was disgusting and almost comical to see a “reporter” from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation suggest that the Canadian Freedom Convoy was cooked up by Putin and the Russians!
Thousands of trucks have arrived in Ottawa. They demand an end to covid tyranny. They are backed by millions of citizens, who braved the Canadian winter at night to cheer the truckers on.
This protest is so important because it’s not limited to Canada. The truckers are being supported worldwide, and a similar convoy is being planned from California to Washington, DC. In a US where grocery store shelves are increasingly bare, the truckers have more leverage than the powers-that-be would like to admit.
If I were prime minister of totalitarian Australia or New Zealand – or most anywhere in Europe – I would be getting pretty nervous right now. Just as the Covid tyranny descended across the globe in a seemingly coordinated fashion, now that the Berlin Wall of the tyrants has been breached, it’s just a matter of time before the shockwaves are felt far and wide.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the Canadian truck drivers. Let’s all do whatever we can to help the freedom movement continue to gather steam!
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.
FREEDOM CONVOY – CANADIAN TRUCKERS INSPIRE THE WORLD!
https://www.bitchute.com/video/0ryAP7gn11N4/
Amazing Polly | January 29, 2022
What a time to be alive! Me & the mister talk all things convoy & show lots of videos, etc from around the country. Get a tissue, you’re going to tear up. ♥ My website is here: https://amazingpolly.net/ God bless the truckers & their families and God bless each and every one of us.
Truckers Demand Letter: https://canada-unity.com/mou/
Now Is the Time for Mass Resignations from Within the Ruling Class
BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER – BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE – JANUARY 30, 2022
If there is a historical precedent for the truckers’ revolt in Canada, and the populist protests in so many other parts of the world, I would like to know what it is. It surely sets the record for convoy size, and it is historic for Canada. But there is much more going on here, something more fundamental. The two-year imposition of bio-fascist rule by diktat seems ever less tenable – the consent of the governed is being withdrawn – but what comes next seems unclear.
We now have two of the most restrictive “leaders” in the developed world (Justin Trudeau of Canada and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand) hiding in undisclosed locations, citing the need to quarantine following Covid exposure. Streets globally have filled up with people demanding an end to mandates and lockdowns, calling for accountability, pushing for resignations, denouncing privileged corporations, and crying out for a recognition of basic freedoms and rights.
Note too that these movements are spontaneous and from “below:” they are populated mostly by the very workers whom governments shoved to face the pathogen two years ago, while the ruling class hid behind their laptops in their living rooms. It was the lockdowns that sharply divided the classes and the mandates that are imposing segregation. Now we are facing a modern allegory to the peasants’ revolt in the Middle Ages.
For a long time, the workers complied bravely but have been forced to accept medical shots they neither wanted nor believed they needed. And many are still being denied freedoms they took for granted only two years ago, their schools non-operational, businesses wrecked, places of entertainment closed or severely restricted. People turn on the radios and televisions to listen to lectures by ruling-class elites who claim to be channeling the science that always ends in the same theme: the rulers are in charge and everyone else must comply, no matter what is asked of them.
But then it became screamingly obvious to the world that none of it worked. It was a gigantic flop and the sky-high cases of late 2021 in most parts of the world put a fine point on it. They failed. It was all for naught. This clearly cannot continue. Something has to give. Something has to change, and this change probably will not wait for the next scheduled elections. What happens in the meantime? Where is this going?
We’ve seen what revolutions look like against monarchies (18th and 19th century), against colonial occupation, against totalitarian one-party states (1989-90), and against banana-republic strongmen (20th century). But what does revolution look like in developed democracies ruled by entrenched administrative states in which elected politicians serve as little more than veneer for bureaucracies?
Since John Locke, it is an accepted idea that people have the right to rule themselves and even to replace governments that go too far in denying that right. In theory, the problem of government overreach in democracy is solved by elections. The argument made for such a system is that it allows for peaceful change of a ruling elite, and this is far less socially costly than war and revolution.
There are many problems with matching theory and reality, among which that the people with the real power in the 21st century are not the people we elect but those who have gained their privileges through bureaucratic maneuvering and longevity.
There are many strange features of the last two years but one of them that stands out to me is how utterly undemocratic the trajectory of events has been. When they locked us down, for example, it was the decision of elected autocrats as advised by credentialled experts that were somehow sure that this path would make the virus go away (or something like that). When they imposed vaccination mandates, it was because they were sure that this was the right path for public health.
There were no polls. There was little if any input from legislatures at any level. Even from the first lockdowns in the US, occurring March 8, 2020 in Austin, Texas, there was no consultation with the city council. Neither were citizens asked. The wishes of the small business people were not solicited. The state legislature was left out entirely.
It was as if everyone suddenly presumed that the whole country would operate on an administrative/dictatorship model, and that the guidelines of health bureaucracies (with plans for lockdowns that hardly anyone even knew existed) trumped all tradition, constitutions, restrictions on state power, and public opinion generally. We all became their servants. This happened all over the world.
It suddenly became obvious to many people in the world that the systems of government we thought we had – responsive to the public, deferential to rights, controlled by courts – were no longer in place. There seemed to be a substructure that was hiding in plain sight until it suddenly took full control, to the cheers of the media and the presumption that this is just the way things are supposed to be.
Years ago, I was hanging out in the building of a federal agency when there was a change of guard: a new administration appointed a new person to head it. The only change that the bureaucrats noticed was new portraits on the wall. Most of these people pride themselves in failing to notice. They know who is in charge and it is not the people we imagine to elect. They are there for life, and face none of the public scrutiny much less accountability that the politicians face daily.
Lockdowns and mandates gave them full power, not only over the one or two sectors they previously ruled but the whole of society and all of its functioning. They even controlled how many people we could have in our homes, whether our businesses could be open, whether we could worship with others, and dictate what precisely we are supposed to do with our own bodies.
Whatever happened to limits on power? The people who put together the systems of government in the 18th century that led to the most prosperous societies in the history of the world knew that restricting government was the key to a stable social order and growing economy. They gave us Constitutions and the lists of rights and the courts enforced them.
But at some point in history, the ruling class figured out certain workarounds to these restrictions. The administrative state with permanent bureaucrats could achieve things that legislatures could not, so they were gradually unleashed under various pretexts (war, depression, terror threats, pandemics). Moreover, governments gradually learned to outsource their hegemonic ambitions to the biggest businesses in the private sector, who themselves benefit from increasing the costs of compliance.
The circle has been completed by enlisting Big Media into the mix of control via access to the class of rulers, to receive and broadcast out the line of the day, and hurl insults at any dissidents within the population (“fringe,” etc.). This has created what we see in the 21st century: a toxic combination of Big Tech, Big Government, Big Media, all backed by various other industrial interests who benefit more from systems of control than they would from a free and competitive economy. Further, this cabal leveled a radical attack on civil society itself, closing churches, concerts, and civic groups.
We’ve been assured by David Hume (1711-1776) and Etienne de la Boétie (1530-1563) that government rule is untenable when it loses the consent of the governed. “Resolve to serve no more,” wrote Boetie, “and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
That’s inspiring but what does it mean in practice? What precisely is the mechanism by which the overlords in our time are effectively overthrown? We’ve seen this in totalitarian states, in states with one-man rule, in states with unelected monarchies. But unless I’m missing something, we’ve not seen this in a developed democracy with an administrative state that holds the real power. We have scheduled elections but those are unhelpful when 1) elected leaders are not the real source of power, and 2) when the elections are too far in the distant future to deal with a present emergency.
One very easy and obvious path away from the current crisis is for the ruling class to admit error, repeal the mandates, and simply allow for common freedoms and rights for everyone. As easy as that sounds, this solution hits a hard wall when faced with ruling-class arrogance, trepidation, and the unwillingness to admit past errors for fear of what that will mean for their political legacies. For this reason, absolutely no one expects the likes of Trudeau, Ardern, or Biden to humbly apologize, admit that they were wrong, and beg the people’s forgiveness. On the contrary, everyone expects them to continue the game of pretend so long as they can get away with it.
The people on the streets today, and those willing to tell pollsters that they are fed up, are saying: no more. What does it mean for the ruling class not to get away with this nonsense anymore? Presuming that they do not resign, they do not call off the dogs of mandates and lockdowns, what is the next step? My instincts tell me that we are about to discover the answer. Electoral realignment seems inevitable but what happens before then?
The obvious answer to the current instability is mass resignations within the administrative state and among the class of politicians that gives it cover. In the name of peace, human rights, and the renewal of prosperity and trust, this needs to happen today. Bury the pride and do what’s right. Do it now while there is still time for the revolution to be velvet.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown.
Bougiecrats are headed for a fall-of-communism-style collapse
Sensing defeat they are lashing out in all sorts of weird ways
By Toby Rogers | January 30, 2022
Background and context
As far back as 2001, Democratic stalwarts John Judis and Ruy Teixeira began making the case, to anyone who would listen, that demographic trends in the U.S. (e.g. immigration and higher birthrates in the Latino population) would lead to a semi-permanent Democratic majority in government. Their book, The Emerging Democratic Majority created a cottage industry of pollsters and political scientists who showed, with fancy charts and graphs, how Democrats, particularly Progressive Democrats, were about to be in the catbird seat of American politics.
Democrats came to see this as their due — they had higher levels of educational attainment and they had been at the forefront of the movements for racial equality, women’s rights, LGBT rights, and environmental protection — and now the arc of history was bending towards justice and they were going to collect their reward. Electing Obama showed that America had turned the page and the 2016 Presidential election was going to cement their place in history as the new hegemonic majority.
And then the wheels came off the bus.
Hillary Clinton was a uniquely flawed candidate with a spectacularly flawed team (made up entirely of loyalists, not critical thinkers) and she lost to a guy who had never held elected office before. Fainting in public at a ceremony commemorating the 9/11 attacks (and following a pneumococcal vaccine) raised doubts about her fitness for office (regarding both her health and veracity) and probably cost her the election.
By the 2020 election, in the midst of a pandemic, Democrats came together with a singular goal — remove Orange Man Bad from office. They settled on a lowest-common-denominator, Weekend-At-Bernie’s-style candidate. If elected, Biden would function as a papal placeholder while the actual power brokers run the day-to-day operations at the White House. Dems barely captured the Presidency but exit polls revealed that their hoped-for demographic waves had evaporated. Latinos abandoned the Democratic Party in large numbers. Democrats still held on to the most highly educated voters but the rest of the electorate is now up for grabs.
So Democrats were already on edge and then the pandemic got worse under Biden after 500 million coronavirus shots were injected into Americans in 2021. Roe will be significantly rolled back by summer, Dems are going to lose the House & Senate in November, and Biden appears to be a one-term president if he can even make it that long.
But the scale of the collapse ahead is so much bigger than losing any one particular election. The coronavirus pandemic was a test, and the entire Democratic theory of the state has failed. The collapse ahead is more like the fall of the Soviet Union. Democrats are not conscious of what is happening yet but on some subconscious level they can feel the political earthquake, and they are lashing out.
The last few weeks have been ugly and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
Dems are holding miserable cards and everyone knows it
Sitting at the poker table here are the cards in the Democratic hand:
Their most beloved public servant, Tony Fauci, funded the creation of a chimera virus that killed 5 million people.
After 10 billion doses, coronavirus vaccines are a complete failure as daily new cases have reached a record high.
The entire theory of the case about their most sacred product, vaccines, is now in tatters.
All federal regulatory agencies (set up by the progressive movement over the last century) — FDA, CDC, NIH — have made the pandemic worse.
Empathy — the foundational emotional impulse of the party — is gone. Blue check bougiecrats now resemble something out of Lord of the Flies as they gleefully block access to safe & effective medicines and taunt their victims.
The entire notion of the regulatory state is now discredited as all federal and most state regulators are captured by industry.
Nearly all bourgeois institutions (media, academia, science and medicine) have failed.
The entire notion of “meritocracy” is gone (our leaders are not the best, nor the brightest, but certainly the most corrupt).
Elite universities have been exposed as Potemkin Villages as they are unable to do even the most basic risk/benefit calculations and are completely unwilling to protect students in their care from the predatory cartel.
What remains
The Democratic worldview lies in shambles. The tribe that remains has abandoned all principles and only believes in holding on to power. The Democratic platform now consists of:
🚩 Censorship
🚩 Cancel culture
🚩 Tribalism
🚩 Jim Crow
🚩 Apartheid
🚩 Show-me-your-papers
🚩 Indefinite extrajudicial detention
🚩 State ownership of your body
🚩 Fascism
🚩 Corporate junk science and
🚩 As many useless toxic vaccines in as many bodies as possible, damn the results.
Self-inflicted harm
I’m struck by the fact that the defining characteristic of this crisis is self-inflicted harm. It’s the greatest show of pointless masochism in human history.
Democrats poison themselves and rush out to poison their kids on the first day that they are deemed “eligible” by the state.
Intellectual heroes of the left — Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Žižek — have thrown all of their ideals out the window and now go around mumbling about how they want more fascism.
Over the past week, “reporters” at the Washington Post seem to be engaged in a debase-a-thon to see who can humiliate themselves the most in defending the cartel.
In just the past few days, a handful of washed up former rock stars have cancelled themselves in a sort of ritual human sacrifice to honor their corporate overlords.
And now the rest of the tribe (*ahem* Brené Brown) are jumping into the volcano to prove that they will remain faithful to the discredited ideology to the end.
Here’s our hand:
The #1 cable news show in the country (Tucker Carlson) is with us.
The #1 podcast in the country (Joe Rogan) is with us.
The #1 book in the country (RFK Jr., The Real Anthony Fauci) is with us.
The best rapper in the country (Jimmy Levy) is with us.
The best athletes in the world (Novak Djokovic, Aaron Rogers, and Kyrie Irving) are with us.
We just had an incredibly successful March on Washington that showed that our numbers have increased by at least 10x over the last year.
Our independent media channels on Substack, Telegram, Rumble, Odysee, Bitchute, and Gettr, are thriving. Each episode of The Highwire now gets several times more viewers than any show on CNN or MSNBC.
Almost everything we have said about the pandemic has proved to be true:
◾️ SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab;
◾️ lockdowns cause more harms than benefits;
◾️ vaccines cause more harms than benefits;
◾️ existing off-the-shelf treatments are the best way to end the pandemic.
Our movement is the embodiment of “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” Our weapons are logic, reason, and common sense. We follow the scientific evidence, not any one particular leader.
And now, we have a model for how to overthrow these corrupt governments — trucker convoys.
But even more than that, our theory of the case has won in a landslide. To wit:
✅ the best check against corruption is to protect the sacred rights of individuals;
✅ the regulatory state is captured and too many “experts” work for the cartel; and
✅ the best way to solve problems is to leave them up to millions of individual citizens using their best judgement rather than centralized, corrupt, statist control.
It’s all over but the shouting.
Biden Regime Escalates War on Supply Chains
By Stephen Lendman | January 30, 2022
Effective on January 22, the Biden regime’s Department of Homeland Security ordered the following:
“(N)on-US individuals seeking to enter the US via land ports of entry and ferry terminals at the US-Mexico and Canada borders (must) be fully (jabbed) for (flu/covid) and provide related proof” of kill shots gotten.
The draconian mandate does not apply to US citizens and lawful residents.
It has nothing to do with protecting public health.
If that was official policy, kill shots and all else flu/covid never would have been mandated and heavily promoted.
Banning unjabbed foreign truckers from entering the US is polar opposite a Biden regime “commitment to…facilitat(e) cross-border trade and travel that is critical to our economy (sic).”
It’s all about more greatly disrupting supply chains than already.
It’s about further increasing shortages of food and other essentials.
It’s about heightening double-digit inflation above its current level.
It’s about continuing the largest-scale ever transfer of wealth from ordinary people to super-rich ones.
It’s about imposing greater misery on ordinary Americans and others abroad.
It includes mass-extermination of unwanted segments of society at home and abroad, along with eliminating what remains of greatly eroded freedoms.
According to draconian Biden regime policy, foreign nationals traveling to the US — including truckers from Canada and Mexico — must:
“Verbally attest to their (jabbing) status.”
“Provide proof of (Phama-controlled) CDC-approved (jabs).”
“Present a valid Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI)-compliant document, such as a valid passport, Trusted Traveler Program card, or Enhanced Tribal Card.”
“Be prepared to present any other relevant documents requested by a US Customs and Border Protection officer during a border inspection.”
While proof of being jabbed doesn’t apply to US citizens and lawful residents, when reentering the US from abroad, they must present a WHTI-compliant document on request.
All of the above is about destroying public health and what remains of a free and open society — on both sides of the US/Canadian border.
It’s about growing social control tyranny that’s heading toward becoming full-blown without all-out resistance against what no one should tolerate.
It’s about transforming the US, Canada — other Western countries and all others — into being more unsafe and unfit to live in than their current deplorable state.
Prohibiting foreign truckers from entering the US unless jabbed was ordered despite knowing that many thousands are unjabbed.
That the vast majority of refusenik truckers are likely to hold firm on this issue.
That banning them from entering the US will cause greater supply shortages and higher prices from demand greatly exceeding supply.
It’s at a time when real inflation is 15.15% — based on how calculated pre-1990 before things were rigged to way understate it.
It’s when real unemployment is 24.8%.
In the world’s richest country, one-fourth of its working-age population is not only jobless.
Based on officially reported data, the vast majority of the unemployed don’t exist.
Thousands of outraged Canadian truckers comprised a 93-mile-long Freedom Convoy en route to the country’s capital.
On Saturday, they arrived. See below.
A statement by its organizers said the following:
Truckers involved oppose draconian mandates by the Biden and complicit Trudeau regimes.
“No more lockdowns. No forced (mass-jabbing) (and yes, it IS force when you choose between a shot you don’t want and your ability to feed yourself),” they stressed.
The Freedom Convoy traveled from British Columbia in Canada’s west to the country’s capital in Ottawa.
According to media reports along the way, large crowds expressed support for their freedom-supporting initiative.
Like the Biden regime, Trudeau requires truckers entering Canada from the US to be jabbed with health-destroying kill shots.
According to Freedom Convoy organizer Chris Barber:
“We’re going to end mandates.”
To be jabbed or not jabbed is “everybody’s personal choice.”
“The straw that broke the camel’s back was the USA border for commercial drivers, and you have to show (a flu/covid) passport.”
“A lot of guys are going to lose their jobs over that.”
What’s going on “has gone too far.”
“If we can’t get across the border freely, and we’re being forced to (be jabbed), we can take a stand or we can’t.”
According to US and Canadian trucking associations, around 26,000 of 160,000 drivers who travel regularly cross border will be out of work if the draconian US and Canadian mandates aren’t challenged and rescinded.
Enough US and Canadian truckers holding firm on this issue is the most effective way of beating it.
As long as it remains official policy of the Biden and Trudeau regimes, countless millions of Americans and Canadians will endure greater economic and financial misery than already.
Late Friday and early Saturday, Freedom Convoy truckers arrived in Ottawa.
Ahead of their arrival, Canadian PM Trudeau moved to an undisclosed location — a cowardly act by the vassal to US interests, notably its highest of high crimes against humanity.
On Saturday, the Ottawa Citizen reported that thousands are protesting peacefully in the nation’s capital.
There have been “no incidents of violence or injuries.”
Despite sub-zero weather conditions, Parliament Hill remains filled with protesting truckers and supporters.
Much the same is expected throughout Sunday and days to follow.
Freedom Convoy truckers didn’t travel thousands of miles to back off from their legitimate demands for the Trudeau regime to rescind its draconian mandates from hell.
Featured Video
Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Mutually Assured Delusion (MAD)
By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | November 5, 2013
Groupthink: A pattern of thought charaterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics.
Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets, by Roland Benabou, published in the Review of Economic Studies. Benabou also has a talk (ppt slides) on this subject.
First, a definition of groupthink (from the ppt slides):
Janis (1972)’s eight symptoms [of groupthink]:
- illusion of invulnerability
- collective rationalization
- belief in inherent morality
- stereotyped views of out-groups
- direct pressure on dissenters
- self-censorship
- illusion of unanimity
- self-appointed mind guards
Sound like any groups that we know? … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- West losing leadership position to Global South: Russia’s president
- How Cognitive Science Explains Our Looming Nuclear Crisis
- Have the US and Israel killed non-proliferation?
- Moscow, Tehran to support each other amid US aggression: Russia’s defense minister
- Iran says EU’s insistence on sanctions hastens its ‘embarrassing descent into irrelevance’
- Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
- Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions
- Ukrainian drone strike kills worker at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
- What the West Hides About Soviet Role in De-Colonization
- Villains of Judea: Douglas Feith
- If Americans Knew
- What ceasefire? Israel won’t stop killing in Gaza, Lebanon – Daily Update
- Palestinians in Gaza Want to Rebuild Food Systems. Israel Isn’t Letting Them.
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- Sheep Theft Sent Shockwaves Through a Palestinian Village. Then, a 12-year-old Boy Was Shot Dead
- Trump alum helps Israel mount AI influence campaign
- Dispatches From Catastrophe
- Despite Denials, AIPAC Is Now Funding Campaign of Ala Stanford In Philadelphia
- Israel’s neighbors are irate about its treatment of religious sites
- Israel escalates in Gaza: killing, torture, hunger – Daily Update
- Six Months into Gaza Ceasefire, Setting the Record Straight About Aid
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
Aletho News 