Related …

No, I have not been given access to NSA Sigint, but I have confirmed that the phone call last week between Iranian President Pezeshkian and Pakistani Prime Minister Shariff was over a non-secure line. I am reliably informed that this was done deliberately by the Iranians and Pakistanis — i.e., the Iranians and Pakistanis were counting on the Americans and the Israelis to be listening in. The key part of the conversation between Pezeshkian and Shariff was this:

President Masoud Pezeshkian communicated a formally structured, three-step strategic ultimatum if US strikes continued:

1. Immediate Withdrawal from the ongoing nuclear peace talks.
2. Total Abandonment of the prospective Nuclear Treaty framework.
3. The Detonation of a Nuclear Device on Iranian soil—executed not as a weapon of war, but as an undeniable demonstration of sovereign capability and ultimate control over the escalation ladder.

When Marco Rubio was called an hour or so later by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, and received the same message, the White House knew that the information was legitimate. While the US intelligence community probably cannot confirm that Iran actually does have a functioning nuke, the Pakistanis believe the Iranians do. The intercepted chat between Pezeshkian and Shariff, followed by Rubio’s conversation with Ishaq Dar, convinced Trump and his advisors that Iran was not making a hollow threat.

Now we know why there has been a dramatic change in Trump’s rhetoric towards Iran… Hell, he downplayed yesterday’s missile dust up in the Persian Gulf, which left Kuwait’s International Airport on fire from an errant PAC3 Patriot missile.

Continue reading Sonar21 …

Dr. Robert Malone clearly doesn’t know his history of epidemiology.

President Trump just signed a new executive order to align the pediatric vaccine schedule with best practices from other developed countries.

At first glance, President Trump’s new Executive Order appears to be about childhood vaccines. It is not. It is about who governs public health in America. The Order represents an attempt to shift authority away from an insulated public health bureaucracy and back toward elected officials who are accountable to voters…

The administration is effectively saying that vaccine policy should not be dictated by a self-perpetuating network of advisory committees, professional associations, and pharmaceutical stakeholders operating behind closed doors. Instead, it argues that elected officials, accountable to voters, have the authority to establish policy objectives and direct agencies accordingly.

Whether courts ultimately agree remains to be seen. The legal challenges will continue. But the constitutional argument is clear: agencies exist to execute policy, not create it independently.

For decades, vaccine policy has been largely insulated from democratic accountability. ACIP recommendations automatically trigger insurance coverage requirements, Medicaid obligations, participation in the Vaccines for Children program, school mandate discussions, and physician practice standards. A relatively small group of experts has wielded extraordinary influence over national health policy.

The problem is not vaccination itself. The problem is regulatory capture.

Vaccines are among the most important public health tools ever developed. Smallpox eradication alone stands as one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Polio, measles, diphtheria, tetanus, and other diseases caused enormous suffering before effective vaccines became available.

Malone here is committing the same fallacy as Daniel Dennett, Immanuel Kant, David Ricardo, and a whole host of others who fail to understand that X is not, and can never be, Not-X.

In fact, the more we see these fallacious appeals to “smallpox eradication” the more dubious I become that the smallpox vaccine ever actually worked; one wonders if the whole story about Dr. Jenner and the cowpox will hold up if one looks at other changes in technology, and hand-washing practices, and sewage systems that are responsible for the huge decline in deaths from previous causes of mortality.

But we know that vaccines didn’t even put a dent in the reduction of the harm caused by “polio, measles, diphtheria, tetanus, and other diseases” because the order of historical events absolutely precludes that. The massive decline in deaths in the USA, in England and Wales, and everywhere else that historically kept track took place before the first vaccine was even invented. It’s not just a lie, it’s a retarded and obviously false one.

From Vox Popoli …

We are living through an age that has abandoned the dedicated pursuit of truth. Our politicians and news personalities talk about “the narrative.” Our academies teach young minds to accept “expert opinion.” Our philosophers argue that truth is “subjective.” Social theorists argue that truth is an “illusion” that powerful people use to control others.

Whenever I hear Democrat Senator Cory Booker all riled up on television, he’s talking about “her truth,” “his truth,” or even “their truth” – as if a hundred conflicting descriptions of the same event could all be truthful.

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” At that moment, President Clinton proved to Americans that he had no interest in truth. 

Politicians lie. That’s hardly breaking news. What is newsworthy, though, is that our society does not even pretend to pursue truth anymore.

We’re fifteen years into this gender-bender madness during which “experts” (including too many with M.D.s) claim that biological sex is not real and that what we perceive as male or female is nothing more than a self-imposed social construct. People who have refused to play this delusional game have been fired from jobs. People looking for jobs tell obvious lies.

Our society does not doggedly pursue truth. It pursues ideological compliance.

Read the entire post at Zerohedge …

We know where this is going.

“The hardest thing is not to change course, not to change policy, but first and foremost to change the way we think.”

— Edgar Morin

The real crisis of our time is not economic, social, or partisan in nature. It is intellectual. For generations, people have been conditioned to fear freedom and mistake dependence for security.

Anyone who observes the political and media developments of recent years will recognize a recurring pattern: For every problem, there are calls for more government. For every bureaucratic failure, there are demands for even more government. For every restriction of freedom, the next restriction is presented as the solution.

The state lives on a fundamental belief: that some people have the right to rule over others. This claim is rarely questioned, even though it is not based on any moral principle that could apply equally to all people. Actions that would be forbidden to an individual are suddenly considered legitimate as soon as they are carried out in the name of an authority, a parliament, or a government.

Domination does not begin with violence. It begins in the mind. It begins the moment a person believes others have the right to dispose of their life. Every political order ultimately rests on this inner consent.

A majority does not make injustice right. Millions of votes do not transform coercion into freedom. A ballot box possesses no magical power that overrides moral standards.

Modern statism presents itself as reason, but in reality, it is the systematic disenfranchisement of the individual. It replaces personal responsibility with regulations, self-organization with control, and voluntary cooperation with political administration. Its greatest achievement is not to liberate people, but to convince them that they could not exist without it.

This development is particularly evident in language. Those who define people solely through administrative categories replace living identities with political constructs. Language becomes a tool of administration, no longer an expression of cultural reality.

Freedom does not arise from new laws, new parties, or new rulers. Freedom arises where people stop looking for rulers. It begins with the realization that no human being has an inherent right to dispose of another.

A free person does not disobey because they want to rebel. They disobey because they understand that responsibility cannot be delegated. They act out of insight rather than fear, out of conscience rather than subservience.

Anarchy does not mean chaos. Chaos arises where people relinquish their responsibility. Anarchy means the absence of domination and the presence of personal responsibility. It is not a political utopia, but the consistent rejection of any claim by one person to power over another.

The crucial question, therefore, is not: Who should rule us?

The crucial question is: Why should anyone rule at all?

From Huter der Irminsul