Category: government transparency

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Accountability government transparency ideological culture

Pandemic Politics … or Poltroonery?

Covid, vaccine, government, mandates, freedom

Fear was a major theme — and ploy — during the pandemic. But it’s looking now like the people we have been told to rely upon for our safety are themselves moved by fear. They’re cowards, poltroons.

The Centers for Disease Control wrote an alert in the thick of 2021’s “vaccine” rollout, warning of the dangers of the Moderna and Pfizer jabs.

It was never sent out.

“In the May 25, 2021, email, exclusively obtained by The Epoch Times, a CDC official revealed why some officials were against sending the alert,” explains Zachary Stieber. You see, while an alert to health care professionals using the official Health Area Network system made complete sense, one CDC official gave a clue to her colleagues’ hesitance: “people don’t want to appear alarmist,” you see.

What did we who took the jab risk? Heart inflammation, or myocarditis. The CDC knew this early on.

But did not warn us.

Now, from listening to Dr. John Campbell on YouTube and Rumble, we have learned a lot more (if not in time in 2021) about the myocarditis threat. The takers of the modRNA treatment who are most at risk are those who engage in strenuous exercise soon after inoculation (which explains why the bulk of the afflicted have been boys and young men in the prime of life). Or so I last heard. I am certainly no doctor; I merely rely upon doctors to advise me.

And those doctors, in turn, rely upon official sources of information like the CDC. 

Who did not advise them properly.

Who worry too much about “appearing alarmist” and not enough about relaying the best information.

Poltroons!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency media and media people

Transient Stars

UAP, UFO, conspiracy, cover-up

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, UFOs and “flying saucers” made newspaper headlines, and government officials had contradictory things to say about them. Then, soon after 1952’s summer UFO flyovers of Washington, D.C, the government got into the denial game, and the general tenor of the conversation changed.

The federal government, it seems, had instituted a policy of “cover-up.”

This has changed in the last few years, after a military investigation into UFOs went public, and as Congress began making public and confidential inquiries.

What do we really know?

Not much.

Still, that startling 1952 UFO wave appears to have received some additional evidence . . . from an unexpected quarter.

A team of astronomers compared old sky plates from the Palomar Observatory —photographed in the 1950s — to modern digitized pictures of the heavens, searching for “vanishing stars.” Appearing and disappearing stars are a fascinating study, in this research the aim being to detect “instances where a star directly collapses into a black hole.” The scientists found none of these “failed supernova” events. 

But what they found surprised them: “several images where multiple star-like objects appear in a single snapshot of the sky, never to be seen again.”

They tested many possible explanations for the mysterious data, and then an automated search coughed up a doozy: “The image showed three bright and beautiful objects looking just like stars in a POSS-I image from the 19th of July 1952 that appeared and vanished within a plate exposure. . . . The three bright objects seemed as real as Betelgeuse itself.”

These were not single bright dots on photographic plates, but multiple simultaneous dots.

As scientist Beatriz Villarroel writes, “our two most prominent and brightest cases of multiple transients coincided in time with the two weekends of the renowned Washington UFO flyovers.”

One wonders whether later mass-sighting events, such as the “Belgian Wave” (November 1989–April 1990) and Arizona’s “Phoenix Lights” (March 13, 1997), might have recorded similar transients above, ready for study. 

Thankfully, we do not need to rely directly upon government agents to do the research.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Two Roadblocks, and Their Names

Jeffrey Epstein, UAP, UFO, cover up, Congress

Meandering through social media, a popular meme with several variants runs something like this:

“Hey, this guy says the government believes in UFOs!

“See, nobody cares. Now show us the Epstein client list.”

The gist: the Jeffrey Epstein story is a bigger, more important story than the on 70-plus years of government control of the UFO story.

Well, we now know precisely why we cannot have either: a few specific politicians are blocking disclosure, one Democrat on the Epstein story and a handful of Republicans on the UFO story.

Hillary Vaughn of Fox News asked Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) why he — the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee — won’t subpoena Epstein’s flight logs to and from his private Caribbean island wherein sex trafficking with under-age females and males went on. His response? “I don’t know anything about his flight logs” and “This has never been raised by anyone.”

This is untrue. 

UFO/UAP transparency, on the other hand, has gone much further than the Epstein — probably because there are fewer politicians implicated in crimes. Yet two major disclosure elements in a recent defense bill have been nixed by Mike Turner (R-Oh.) and Mike Rogers (R-Ala.). Journalist Ross Coulthart, who has covered this story best, ascribes this pair’s opposition to disclosure to their respective military-industrial complex constituencies. And Coulthart adds that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also had a hand in disclosure suppression.

Both the Epstein and the UFO story reveal a lot about our government, which wants us to know the truth about neither.

And as for the notion that these issues must be played off each other, the proper memed response would be “Why can’t we have both?”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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If/Why

UAP, UFO, disclosure, Congress, censorship

“This is about accountability, and about transparency,” said Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), at yesterday’s House Oversight Committee’s bipartisan press conference on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP’s) — “about holding the Deep State to task for their refusal to declassify information that the American people need to know, that Congress needs to know.”

He paints the same picture of the UAP/UFO issue that has been rumored about for nearly 80 years: “Foreign objects are buzzing around in our airspace, and Joe Biden’s over 30 generals have not only been silent on the issue, but have yet to play ball with Congress.”

The tenor of the presser was summarized early by host Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.): “It is unacceptable that any mid-level, unelected bureaucrat staffers can tell members of Congress that we are not allowed to access information about UAP’s.” 

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has pushed a disclosure procedure on the order of The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, but these representatives scorned that notion, arguing there remains too much secrecy surrounding the 1963 event in Dallas. 

“So, whether it’s little green men, American technology, or worse — technology from the CCP — we need to know,” insists Rep. Ogles.

“I think the American people have a simple question,” Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) hazarded, “which is ‘if none of this exists, if this is all false, why, at every turn, are there people trying to stop the transparency and the disclosure? Why are folks who are in charge of committees, whether they are in the House or in the Senate, opposed to this disclosure?’ And it’s that point alone that piques the interest.”

Indeed it does. 

It’s time for the people to find out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency

The Censorship Industrial Complex

censorship, social media

“Many people insist that governments aren’t involved in censorship,” tweeted Michael Shellenberger on Tuesday, “but they are. And now, a whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance.”

Because much of recent years’ censorship has occurred on corporate-owned-and-run social media platforms, like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter (now X), some have claimed “it’s not censorship” and, because private, is immune to legal prosecution. This quasi-libertarian argument was most vociferously marshaled by leftists and centrists, who’ve found in the libertarian “private property is sacred” ideal a handy excuse for the censorship they love.

They love it because of what they hate: Fox News, most specifically, and alternative media based on podcasting and vlogging platforms, more generally. These media outlets have bucked the foreign policy establishment as well as the new racism of Critical Race Theory, and official narratives about COVID. 

So they must be squelched — as “disinformation.”

This is all made more clear in what Shellenberger calls “The CTIL Files.” 

The leaked documents “describe the activities of an ‘anti-disinformation’ group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League,” which “officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security.’’

While government operatives and contractors organized, at first, to avoid constitutional and legislative limitations to conducting propaganda and psychological warfare against Americans, the plan was, from the beginning (says the source), “to become part of the federal government.”

In the end, “the military and intelligence agencies” got involved, along with “civil society organizations and commercial media.” Methods used include burner phones, plausible deniability, and “sock puppet accounts and other offensive techniques.”

You can watch today’s hearing (10:00 AM EST) of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, featuring Shellenberger, Rupa Subramanya, and Matt Taibbi.

Tell me what you think.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency insider corruption international affairs

Northern Disclosure

Justin Trudeau, airplane, China, India, Sikh

Oh, Canada. 

My wife and I visited our northern neighbor just a week ago, while its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was stuck in India . . . with plane trouble.

“Trudeau’s presence at the G20 summit . . . came against a backdrop of tensions between his government and host India over Ottawa’s handling of rightwing Sikh separatists,” U.K.’s Guardian reported. “New Delhi accuses Ottawa of turning a blind eye to the activities of radical Sikh nationalists who seek a separate Sikh homeland in northern India.”

Meanwhile, in Vancouver, British Columbia, I served as a member of the Punjab Referendum Commission, an international group with some know-how about direct democracy. We’re advising and monitoring the referendums being organized around the world by U.S.-based Sikhs for Justice. Nearly a million Sikhs live in Canada.

Mr. Trudeau should wear the Indian government’s scorn as a badge of honor, of course, for upholding the Sikhs’ basic rights to speak out in his putative free society. 

But that’s not the only billion-being nation-state brouhaha this scion faces; Trudeau’s Liberal Party controls the Parliament but “after months of demands from opposition parties” just finally agreed to an official public inquiry into foreign (read: Chinese) interference in their political affairs. 

“Canadian news reports earlier this year, citing anonymous Canadian intelligence officials and leaked classified documents, alleged that Chinese intelligence officials had funneled donations to its preferred candidates,” explains Axios, “all members of Canada’s Liberal Party led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.”

Worse than plane trouble.

I hope Canadians will get to the bottom of it and hold their politicians accountable in ways that we in the U.S. did not 30 years ago when Washington was first awash with Chinese cash.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Accountability First Amendment rights government transparency

Overly Broad Stonewalling

United States, censorship, intelligence agency, FBI, CIA, free speech, First Amendment

How specific do requests for records of unconstitutional activity have to be?

In February, the Federal Bureau of Investigation pretended an inability to fulfill America First Legal Foundation’s freedom-of-information request for documents about the FBI’s pre-election efforts to censor Twitter users. The agency declared the request to be “overly broad.”

What’s been “overly broad” is the policy of censorship, disinformation, and more by the Deep State using private partners. Meaning their real problem is doubtless that the requested documents are “overly incriminating,” too unmistakably what AFL wanted.

So the FBI stonewalled. 

And AFL has sued, in its complaint concluding that the agency’s “blanket denial of AFL’s FOIA request is contrary to law and should not stand.”

Thanks to evidence brought to light by other litigation and by Matt Taibbi’s reporting on Twitter’s internal records, none of us is just guessing that the FBI has acted to censor constitutionally protected discourse. We know that the FBI’s National Election Command Post flagged at least 25 Twitter accounts for “misinformation.”

But the only party to the censorship revealing relevant information voluntarily is Twitter itself, thanks to decisions by Twitter’s new management under Elon Musk.

With respect to everybody else colluding to censor social media — the FBI, the DOJ, the White House, Google, Facebook, etc. — looks like it’ll have to be lawsuits every step of the way.

The First Amendment’s stricture upon Congress to “make no law” abridging our “freedom of speech, or of the press,” does not allow the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and other agencies to simply subcontract. Nor are they free to mold public opinion. 

A government-controlled “press” is not a free press.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Chinese Biolab in California

California, biolab, China

The abandoned biolab found last December in Reedley, California, was uncovered by local law enforcement — not the Department of Homeland Security, the CDC, the FBI, or any of the federales’ faker’s dozen of intel agencies.

But the locals quickly discovered this was not just an unregistered business, or the anodyne testing service the paperwork for the company promised. What they found in the warehouse was a suspicious array of mice, living and dead, and vials of diseases, kept, we are told, in a careless manner.

Almost as ominously, the business — Prestige Biotech, previously known as Universal Meditech Inc. — is Chinese-owned and operated. 

And had received government subsidies. 

Ours! Who knows what came from China?

“House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), who represent congressional districts in California’s Central Valley, wrote a letter to the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee seeking a probe into how and why Universal Meditech Inc. was granted two Payment Protection Program (PPP) loans of $74,912 each in April 2020 and February 2021,” explains The Epoch Times.

The company had previously been awarded — but did not qualify for or actually receive — a $360,000 tax credit under California’s CalCompetes GO-Biz program.

Why wasn’t this tale told for half a year? 

“The FBI,” as Mark Tapscott writes, “imposed a blackout on any public statements about the facility.” 

“[T]he FBI and the CDC and everybody else in the alphabet soup of state and federal agencies” told locals not to comment, says Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba.

Curiously, the reporting makes no mention of Homeland Security. What is that agency for, again?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bless You, John Kerry

John Kerry, climate change, global warming

It is hard to find the words. 

Having just finished wringing out a soaked handkerchief, soggy with tears of gratitude for your recent act of high nobility and raw courage in defying the worst aspects of current U.S. policy and your own dismal and dismaying track record of silly pronouncements as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, an actual title I might add, I wanted to take a moment to say Thank You.

Thank you, sir, thanks for declining to again deploy your eloquence, charisma, and illogic in the service of the same old dreary nonsense.

For when asked during a recent congressional hearing whether the United States would be contributing to a fund to pay “climate reparations” to countries harmed by extreme manifestations of weather, aka “climate-driven” natural disasters, you said, flatly, “No, under no circumstances.”

Wha . . . ? Was this the same man who likened the fight against “climate change” to the fight against the Nazis in World War II?

I mean, I’ll believe it when I don’t see it, but for now I just want to say: Wow! 

Especially since last year’s Conference of the Parties, COP27, billed as “a defining moment in the fight against climate change,” where the United States did express support for such payments.

So the U.S. will not, after all, be using taxpayer money to appease other countries for also experiencing weather. Great news. For every minute it lasts, I really appreciate it. 

I am veritably dripping with . . . gratitude.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Infected by Politics

covid, science, scientist, politics, politicians

In 2020, circumstantial evidence suggested that the COVID-19 virus had originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

Let’s say that the available data, limited by Chinese uncooperativeness, couldn’t exclude the possibility of a natural origin. Nevertheless, the evidence certainly sufficed to prevent the escape-from-lab explanation from being reasonably deemed an implausible “conspiracy theory.”

Years later, U.S. officials who probably also knew better three years ago have acknowledged that, yes, escape from the lab is likely how the pandemic began.

We’re also learning from communications that have come to light that the authors of an influential 2020 paper published in Nature “proving” that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct” fudged their reasoning for fear of China.

Co-author Andrew Rambaut, to co-authors: “Given the shitshow that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural process.”

Co-author Kristian Andersen: “Yup, I totally agree that that’s a very reasonable conclusion. Although I hate when politics is injected into science — but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances.”

The paper itself asserted that the authors’ analyses “clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct . . .” (emphases added). And: no “laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

This paper was then used to rationalize censorship of persons proposing the Wuhan lab as the site of origin. It was completely political; the scientists were acting as politicians and not scientists when they authored it. Better to blame bats than the dreaded Chinazis.

Funded by the U.S. Government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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