Trudeau’s orders, aimed in part at cutting off funds to protesters, have a wider scope than previously reported – which is “forcing portfolio managers and securities firms to take a harder look at who they are doing business with,” according to Bloomberg.
The new rules make demands of a broad list of entities — including banks, investment firms, credit unions, loan companies, securities dealers, fundraising platforms, insurance companies and fraternal benefit societies. They must determine whether they’re in “possession or control of property” of a person who’s attending an illegal protest or providing supplies to demonstrators, according to orders published by the government late Tuesday night.
If they find such a person in their customer list, they must freeze their accounts and report it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Canada’s intelligence service, the regulations say. Any suspicious transactions must also be reported to the country’s anti-money-laundering agency, known as Fintrac. -Bloomberg
Ottawa police are handing out this leaflet:
Trudeau took the knee beside BLM protesters, and cried and apologized for century-old abuses against Aboriginals. But hard working, patriotic, ordinary Canadians have no place on his victims list. The jackboots are coming, but clever Trudeau will impose the suffering in cyberspace, and no one will notice, except those whose opinion was objectionable to him.
UK Conservative Party Chairman Oliver Dowden recently spoke at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC. decrying the pernicious “woke” ideology. He describes the ridiculous theories and the dangers to Western democracies at this historical moment. Below is an excerpted transcript of his speech in italics with my bolds and added images. H/T Tyler Dowden and conservatives.com.
For nearly half a century “Heritage” has been central to the revival of conservatism. It has always flown the flag for limited government, for free markets and for individual responsibility. And as someone who grew up under Thatcher and Reagan I am proud to say that those values shaped my politics. So, it is a huge privilege to be here speaking to you as Chairman of the Conservative Party the oldest and most successful political party in the history of the democratic world.
And the tireless work of institutions such as Heritage in promoting those values is becoming more important, not less. Today, a social media mob can cancel you merely because you have dared to challenge one of the Left’s fashionable nostrums. The enemies of the West are finding fresh confidence in their eternal battle against liberty.
So, conservatives themselves must find the confidence to mount a vigorous defence of the values of a free society. In a speech that is really remarkable for its foresight years before many had woken up to the fragility of the West’s victory in the Cold War Margaret Thatcher warned of a tendency of democracies to relax when the worst appears to be over.
She warned that new dangers to the West were also being ignored. Now, that is certainly true for China. The idea that Beijing’s partial embrace of free markets would automatically lead to greater social and personal political freedoms has proved to be breathtakingly naive. The world watches the relationship between America and its allies not only must we stand together we must be seen to stand together.
But there is another dimension to this crisis afflicting the West that she could not have foreseen. Rogue states are seeking to challenge the international order.
And at the precise point when our resolve ought to be strongest a pernicious new ideology is sweeping our societies.
An ideology that if not confronted threatens to rob us of the self-confidence we need to uphold those very values. It goes by many names. In Britain, its adherents sometimes describe themselves as “social justice warriors”.
They claim to be “woke”, awakened to the so-called truths of our societies. But wherever they are found they pursue a common policy inimical to freedom. In their analysis free speech is not a fundamental right necessary for the discovery of truth. To them it is a dangerous weapon that should be curtailed to prevent “harm”. “Free speech is hate speech” is one of their more bizarre slogans.
Each of us is accorded a level of “privilege”, that has nothing to do with our own personal struggles, but is based on our membership of a particular group. So, by their own shallow logic: as a man who went to Cambridge University and who now serves in the British Cabinet, I am a pinnacle of so-called “privilege”. It is apparently completely irrelevant to them that my parents were a shop worker and a factory worker who lost his job during a recession.
If I am privileged it is because I have a loving family and enjoyed an excellent education at my local state community school. But even to question my supposed privilege is deemed to be proof of how privileged I am.
Now, you might have noticed that the woke warriors take a particularly interest in history. Clearly history is a living subject, one that will inevitably be revised. But these activists are not interested in real scholarship or nuance or in explaining the context of the bad things that our ancestors did alongside the good. They are engaged in a form of Maoism determined to expunge large parts of our past in its entirety.
For them, nothing is sacred. Winston Churchill was central to the Allied victory in a fight for survival against Nazi tyranny. Yet some seek to trash his whole reputation and deface monuments to him in wanton acts of iconoclastic fury.
It is tempting to assume that this onslaught can be passed off as a passing fad. That it is so ridiculous so detached from what the majority think – and many have argued this – that it can simply be ignored. Universities from which so much of this unthinking revisionism has emerged have, of course, for decades been prey to Left-wing excesses. There has always been a tendency among cultural and educational elites to serve their own interests rather than serve the public at large. And of course, we conservatives have frequently confronted it.
But this ideology is now everywhere. It’s in our universities but also, in our schools. In government bodies but also in corporations. In social science faculties but also, in the hard sciences.
But I tell you, it is a dangerous form of decadence. Just when our attention should be focused on external foes we seem to have entered this period of extreme introspection and self-criticism and it really does threaten to sap our societies of their own self-confidence. Just when we should be showcasing the vitality of our values and the strength of democratic societies, we seem to be willing to abandon those values for the sake of appeasing this new groupthink.
There are several interlinked dangers to all of this.
To begin with, perhaps an obvious one. Those of us who grew up under Thatcher and Reagan or indeed, under Roosevelt and Churchill, were inspired by those leaders. But we also had an instinctive pride in our national story, a pride that joined even political opponents in a common sense of endeavour. But if they cease to be sources of pride that unite diverse population in a common understanding of who we are and what we stand for, then we lose that essential unity of purpose.
And it is particularly striking that the two countries, the United Kingdom and the United States,where the woke agenda is pursued the most aggressively, those are also very same countries where patriotism is most open and welcoming. Why on earth else would we be such magnets for migrants seeking to build a better life on our shores?
In Britain first, second and third generation migrants are among the most fervent champions of the countries they have chosen to call their own home. Yet increasingly they are told that the pride they feel is somehow misplaced. Or even worse than that, and even more offensively, that their patriotism is some kind of “false consciousness”.
Moreover this woke ideology encourages a bizarre form of moral relativism, a view that western nations are so compromised that they have no right to denounce the rogue states of today. For all their fury at historical “imperialism” , these activists have absolutely nothing to say about Vladimir Putin’s modern-day empire-building. Indeed, one of the perversities of this worldview is that the “imperialist” West is always at fault, even if that is in standing up for a nation that has experienced the horrors of life under an actual evil empire, in our own living memory.
And yet day by day that worldview gains traction in elite circles. We risk a collapse in resolve if all we hear is that our societies are monstrous, unjust, oppressive. Why on earth would anyone fight to sustain them? It’s a narrative that almost guarantees demoralisation and despair. And of course there is an opportunity cost of our irrational introspection. A West confident in its values would not be obsessing over pronouns or indeed, seeking to decolonise mathematics. Now you might say that’s rather difficult when the numerals we use are actually Arabic, but I’ll leave that to others to explain.
The West should be pointing out to would-be aggressors the strength of the values of a free society even in the most desperate of circumstances. To the Hong Kongers fighting for their rights in the face of extra ordinary odds. To the people of Ukraine determined that their nation should have the right to determine its future. To the women of Afghanistan prepared to defy Taliban rule even at the risk of their own lives.
Yet we allow ourselves to be obsessed by what divides us rather than what unites us. And, it shouldn’t just be conservatives who stand up for what made the West great. There was, of course, a time not very long ago when the mainstream Left was just as committed to free speech as the Right. Or when so-called “liberals” actually had something in common with those great champions of freedom the likes of Gladstone and John Stuart Mill, both of whom, incidentally are currently at risk of cancelled.
The UK joined Nato under a Labour prime minister. And, when Left-wing parties were dominated by working people rather than professional activists, they were just as patriotic as their conservative opponents. Sadly, the Left has abandoned the field. Its leaders are either too weak to stand up for our own common values or worse than that, they’ve embraced the doctrine of woke themselves.
It seems that we conservatives must find the strength to defend the principles of free society on our own.
So, our Conservative government in the United Kingdom is legislating to protect free speech on campus. We will stop the sinister phenomenon of academics or students who offend left wing orthodoxies being censored or harassed. As Culture Secretary I challenged those cultural institutions, those institutions funded by ordinary taxpayers but which promoted politicised agendas. We have made it clear to schools that it is illegal to teach the concept of “white privilege” as though it were undisputed fact.
And we must also not be frightened to expose the behaviour of some corporate giants. And you know, all of us know, the sort of corporations that I’m talking about. Ones that denounced perfectly legitimate efforts to reform electoral laws in democracies, whilst at the very same time, keeping a profitable silence whilst flogging their goods to authoritarian regimes.
We Conservatives, instead, are on the side of people who believe that we are a force for good in the world. The US and the UK may certainly be different societies but we are joined by the same fundamental values.
Neither of us can afford the luxury of indulging in this painful woke psychodrama. It will take courage to resist it. Too many people have already fallen for the dismal argument that standing up for freedom is reactionary, or that somehow it is kind or virtuous to submit to these self-righteous dogmas. Well it plainly is not.
Instead as Margaret Thatcher said to you almost 25 years ago the task of conservatives is to remake the case for the West to proclaim our beliefs in the wonderful creativity of the human spirit, in the rights of property and the rule of law, and in the extraordinary fruitfulness of enterprise and trade. She refused to see the decline of the West as our inevitable destiny. And neither should we.
Vinay Prasad writes at the Tablet How the CDC Abandoned Science. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and some added images. H\T Raymond
Mass youth hospitalizations, COVID-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda
The agency guiding America’s pandemic policy is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which sets widely adopted policies on masking, vaccination, distancing, and other mitigation efforts to slow the spread of COVID and ensure the virus is less morbid when it leads to infection. The CDC is, in part, a scientific agency—they use facts and principles of science to guide policy—but they are also fundamentally a political agency: The director is appointed by the president of the United States, and the CDC’s guidance often balances public health and welfare with other priorities of the executive branch.
Throughout this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance, pushing a series of scientific results that are severely deficient.
This research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and does not support the press-released conclusions that often follow. In all cases, the papers are uniquely timed to further political goals and objectives; as such, these papers appear more as propaganda than as science. The CDC’s use of this technique has severely damaged their reputation and helped lead to a growing divide in trust in science by political party. Science now risks entering a death spiral in which it will increasingly fragment into subsidiary verticals of political parties. As a society, we cannot afford to allow this to occur. Impartial, honest appraisal is needed now more than ever, but it is unclear how we can achieve it.
Masking Propaganda
In November 2020, a CDC study sought to prove that mask mandates slowed the spread of the coronavirus. The study found that counties in Kansas which implemented mask mandates saw COVID case rates start to fall (light blue below), while counties that did not saw rates continue to climb (dark blue):
The data scientist Youyang Gu immediately noted that locales with more rapid rise would be more likely to implement a mandate, and thus one would expect cases to fall more in such locations independent of masking, as people’s behavior naturally changes when risk escalates. Gu zoomed out on the same data and considered a longer horizon, and the results were enlightening: It appeared as if all counties did the same whether they masked or not:
The CDC had merely shown a tiny favorable section, depicted in the red circle above, but the subsequent pandemic waves dwarf their results. In short, the CDC’s study was not capable of proving anything and was highly misleading, but it served the policy goal of encouraging cloth mask mandates.
Child Vaccination Propaganda
Masking is not the only matter in which the CDC’s stated policy goal has coincided with very poor-quality science that was, coincidentally, published in their own journal. Consider the case of vaccination for kids between the ages of 5 and 11. COVID vaccination in this age group has stalled, which runs counter to the CDC’s goal of maximum vaccination. Interestingly, vaccinating kids between 5 and 11 is disputed globally; Sweden recently elected not to vaccinate healthy kids in this age group, and some public health experts believe that it would be preferable for kids to gain immunity from natural exposure instead. Stalling U.S. uptake therefore reflects a legitimate and open scientific debate, regardless of whether the CDC’s policy goal would like to consider it closed.
Enter the CDC’s new study. Widely covered in news outlets, the January 2022 study claims that kids below the age of 18 who get diagnosed with COVID are 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. “These findings underscore the importance of COVID-19 prevention among all age groups,” the authors write, “including vaccination for all eligible children and adolescents.” But a closer examination of the study again reveals problems.
First, it does not adjust for body mass index. Higher BMI is a risk factor for COVID, prompting hospitalization and diabetes, and yet the CDC analysis does not adjust for weight at all.
Second, the absolute risks the study finds are incredibly low. Even if the authors’ finding is true, it demonstrates an increase in diabetes of up to 6 in 10,000 COVID survivors.
Third, the CDC’s analysis uses billing record diagnoses as a surrogate for COVID cases, but many kids had and recovered from COVID without seeking medical care. Without a true denominator that conveys the actual number of COVID cases, the entire analysis might be artifact.
As the former dean of Harvard Medical School Jeffrey Flier told The New York Times, “The CDC erred in taking a preliminary and potentially erroneous association and tweeting it to specifically create alarm in parents.” Some might view it as a mistake, but after observing these matters for almost two years, I believe it was the entire point of the study: Alarm might boost flagging vaccine uptake in kids. (Already, a better study out of the United Kingdom finds no causal link between COVID and diabetes in kids.)
Teenager Vaccination Propaganda
Manufacturing alarm at the very moment an age or other demographic cohort is targeted for vaccination has become a pattern for the CDC. On May 10, 2021, the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization for the 12- to 15-year-old cohort to receive the Pfizer vaccine. On June 11, the CDC published a study in MMWR claiming to demonstrate rising hospitalization among this age group; widespread media coverage of the study quickly followed. But the absolute rates for this age group were, in reality, amazingly low: Less than 1.5 per 100,000, which was lower than they had been in the previous December. Meanwhile, a safety signal was being investigated—myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle—which was more common after the second dose, and reported to be as frequent as 1 in 3,000-6,000, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health. Other countries became reluctant to push two doses within the standard 21- to 28-day timeline for these ages. By July, the U.K. had decided against pushing vaccines for this cohort, a decision that was walked back only slowly.
The CDC was undeterred, and in recent weeks the agency’s director has started to push for more doses at these ages. Against the advice of an FDA advisory committee, Rochelle Walensky has moved forward with recommending boosters for 12- to 15-year-olds. This view differs from WHO guidance and that of other countries, including Canada, which is not authorizing boosters for healthy adolescents aged 12-17. But when it comes to vaccination, the CDC has a single policy: All Americans should get three doses, regardless of age or medical conditions.
This is not science as such, but science as political propaganda.
Natural Immunity Unmentionable
If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider a final example: the CDC’s near-total dismissal of natural immunity. Many other countries consider recovery from prior infection as a vaccination equivalent or better, an assumption that makes both medical and intuitive sense, but the CDC has steadfastly maintained that everyone needs the same number of vaccinations whether they have recovered from a COVID infection or not. This view is countered by data showing that vaccinating people who have recovered from COVID results in more severe adverse events than vaccinating people who have not had COVID.
In order to bolster the claim that people who have recovered from COVID benefit from vaccination as much as those who never had it, the CDC published a fatally flawed Kentucky-based analysis. The August 2021 study compared people who had contracted COVID twice against those who had it just once, and concluded that those who had it once were more likely to have had vaccination. But the study could have easily missed people who had two documented cases of COVID but might have had severe underlying medical conditions—such as immunosuppression—that predisposed them to multiple bouts of infection in a short period. In addition, people who had COVID once and then got vaccinated might not have sought further testing, believing themselves invulnerable to the virus. The study did not adequately address these biases.
Months later, the CDC published a stronger, cohort study showing clearly that natural immunity was more robust than vaccine-induced immunity in preventing future COVID hospitalizations, and moreover, that people who survived infection were massively protected whether vaccinated or not.
Conclusion: Political Capture of CDC
So why does the supposedly impartial CDC push weak or flawed studies to support the administration’s pandemic policy goals? The cynical answer is that the agency is not in fact impartial (and thus not sufficiently scientific), but captured by the country’s national political system. That answer has become harder to avoid. This is a precarious situation, as it undermines trust in federal agencies and naturally leads to a trust vacuum, in which Americans feel forced to cast about in a confused search for alternative sources of information.
Once that trust is broken, it’s not easily regained. One way out would be to reduce the CDC’s role in deciding policy, even during a pandemic. Expecting the executive agency tasked with conducting the science itself to also help formulate national policy—which must balance both scientific and political concerns and preferences—has proven a failure, because the temptation to produce flawed or misleading analysis is simply too great. In order to firewall policymaking from science, perhaps scientific agency directors shouldn’t be political appointees at all.
Ultimately, science is not a political sport. It is a method to ascertain truth in a chaotic, uncertain universe.
Science itself is transcendent, and will outlast our current challenges no matter what we choose to believe. But the more it becomes subordinate to politics—the more it becomes a slogan rather than a method of discovery and understanding—the more impoverished we all become. The next decade will be critical as we face an increasingly existential question: Is science autonomous and sacred, or a branch of politics? I hope we choose wisely, but I fear the die is already cast.
Vinay Prasad is a hematologist-oncologist, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Monday announcement invoking the Emergencies Act to break a weeks-long protest in Ottawa has only served to inspire more resistance, one protest organizer told The Daily Wire.
The Freedom Convoy, a loose coalition of truckers protesting vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions, rolled into Ottawa in late January and has camped downtown since. The protesters have congested parts of the city around Canada’s seat of government on Parliament Hill while demanding a loosening of COVID-19 restrictions.
So far, Trudeau has refused to meet with the truckers, instead employing increasingly hard-nosed political and legal tactics to try and break the protest.
David Paisley says he has been protesting for weeks now and, as a street captain, helps organize protesters and direct those who wish to support the cause with funds, goods, or services. Paisley told The Daily Wire that Trudeau’s announcement, which made headlines across major news organizations in the U.S. and Canada, went off barely noticed by the protesters on the ground.
“No one really cares about any new announcement. I mean the police have been breaking the law long before any emergency power. They were taking our fuel away. They were arresting people for purely having jerry cans or having empty tanks of fuel,” he said. “They’ve already been doing these ‘emergency powers’ and all it does is make people dig their heels in more,” Paisley added.
“The irony … is that these very powers and threats are why we are here.”
Trudeau announced in a press conference Monday afternoon that he was authorizing the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act, a law passed in the late 1980s to take the place of the War Measures Act. The act strengthens Canadian law enforcements’ ability to fine and imprison violators and ensures the operation of “essential services” such as towing rigs, Trudeau said during his press conference. It also empowers banks and financial institutions to freeze the accounts of any person or business suspected of being involved with an “illegal blockade.”
Paisley said that the protest would continue despite frozen bank accounts or impounded trucks until every protester is cuffed and thrown in prison.
“[The Trudeau government] underestimated the determination and the intelligence of those here, and so everyone still here on the ground, they’re basically willing to give their lives for this – peacefully of course,” Paisley said.
“They’re prepared to drain every last dollar, even from frozen bank accounts,” he added later.
The truckers in Ottawa have received wave after wave of support in the form of cash funds, food, fuel, letters, and even a free laundry service by two ladies who walk Paisley’s street every day collecting clothes. The trucker said he received word on Monday from two men who wanted to deliver hundreds of liters of extra diesel fuel for the convoy.
“You come and sit in the driver’s seat for a few hours and you’ll be able to fill up your wallet again. It’s incredible. People are just handing you fifties, hundreds, packs of hundreds. A friend of mine received a Bible and when he opened it up it had 500 cash inside the bible,” Paisley said.
“The more the government tries to stomp this out, the more and more it causes people to rise up and say ‘this is wrong, and I side with these truckers,’” he said. “These steps from the government have simply hardened the determination of the great men and women down here, so I’m not really concerned at all.
We’ll have lots of new friends when we all get tossed in prison together.”
Footnote
BREAKING: Trudeau regime now using terrorism laws to go after crypto and crowdfunding pic.twitter.com/Fj8ge0Pyzy
The Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo has been hacked and temporarily disabled after it facilitated the raising of nearly $9 million for the convoy of Canadian truckers who have been protesting vaccine mandates.
The Delaware-based organization, which hosted a crowdfunding effort for the Canadian truckers after crowdfunding site GoFundMe took down their initial fundraiser at the urging of the Canadian government, was disabled Sunday night. Visitors were redirected to the domain GiveSendGone[.]wtf.
The site had raised over $8.7 million in one week after the GoFundMe effort was taken down.
The [hacker’s] statement alleged that those who had contributed to the fundraiser were the same ones who had “helped fund the January 6 insurrection in the U.S.” and had “helped fund an insurrection in Ottawa.”
GiveSendGo’s list of donors, approximately 92,000 of them, was also leaked and shared online.
The site stated on Feb. 10 in response to previous Canadian court efforts to halt the funds that the Canadian government “has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here” and that all the donations “flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”
Time to End the COVID Emergencywas written by Dr. Harvey Risch, professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. This op/ed was originally published by the Wall Street Journal. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
The time has come for states and the federal government to end their COVID declarations of emergency and the accompanying closures, restrictions, propaganda, distancing requirements, forced masking and vaccine mandates. COVID may circulate at some level forever, but Americans can now protect those vulnerable to it with standard medical procedures. They can treat it as they would the flu.
Emergency measures need continuous justification and there isn’t one anymore.
Omicron has become the dominant variant. Over the past two months, the Delta variant strain—Omicron’s main competitor and the most recent aggressive version of COVID—has been declining in the U.S. That is true both in proportion of infections (62 percent on Dec. 18 fell to 2 percent on Jan. 15, then to 0.1 percent on Jan. 29) and the number of daily infected people (97,000 to 14,000 to 400), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the next two weeks, Delta cases will almost certainly decline to the point that the variant essentially disappears, as did the strains that came before it.
Omicron is mild enough that most people, even many in high-risk categories, can adequately cope with the infection. Omicron infection is no more severe than seasonal flu, and generally less so. In America, many of those vulnerable to COVID are already vaccinated and protected against severe disease.
Treatments have also vastly improved since the early days of the pandemic. The medical community has learned much about the utility of inexpensive supplements like vitamin D to reduce severe disease risk, and there are a host of good therapeutics available to prevent hospitalization and death should a vulnerable patient become infected. For young people, the risk of severe disease—already low before Omicron—is minuscule.
There’s evidence that Americans have built up additional immunity through the recent Omicron wave. Daily Omicron infections peaked around Jan. 11 and have been declining. Mortality from COVID, including some from remaining Delta cases, is now declining as well. Influenza in typical seasons peaks in mid-February. That Omicron has been decreasing since early January suggests that the decline may have less to do with seasonal factors than built-up population immunity. If substantial new variants arise, this suggests case and death counts could still remain relatively low.
There is no longer any justification for the federal government and states to maintain their declarations of emergency. The lockdowns, personnel firings, shortages and school disruptions are doing at least as much damage to the population’s health and welfare as the virus. The state of emergency is unjustified now,and it can’t be justified by fears of a hypothetical recurrence of a more severe infection at some unknown point in the future. If the government can grant itself such power, then the limits imposed by the federal and state Constitutions are effectively meaningless.
Americans have sacrificed their rights and livelihoods for two years to protect the general public health. Government officials must now do their part and give Americans their lives back.
Race obsessed-leftists want it both ways: force the NFL to have fewer white coaches and owners, while still signing NFL players based on their performance.
The efforts of leftists to destroy the world of sports took another Great Leap Forward last week with the news that former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a class-action suit against the NFL and all 32 NFL teams for racial discrimination. Flores was fired in January after three seasons with the Dolphins, and he recently interviewed for the New York Giants head coaching job that instead went to Brian Daboll.
Flores’ lawsuit is an unhinged, 58-page rant that focuses more on topics like professional football history and George Floyd rather than Flores’ specific allegations because his allegations are preposterous. Flores says the NFL “remains rife with racism” when it comes to hiring and retaining black coaches, and that the league “is managed much like a plantation,” yet he has been employed as an NFL coach for the past 14 years, and made upwards of $3 million per season as the Dolphins head coach.
The thrust of Flores’ suit is that since 70 percent of NFL players are black, and anywhere between 3 percent and 34 percent of coaches and executive personnel are black, that is prima facie evidence that the league is “racially segregated.” But Flores himself was an enthusiastic participant in this supposed “injustice,” since nearly 75 percent of his own coaching staff during his tenure with the Dolphins were white. And nowhere in Flores’ lawsuit does it mention that he was fired in Miami by a black general manager, Chris Grier.
Also unmentioned in the lawsuit is precisely how Flores would remedy the situation. If we want an NFL that proportionally “looks like America,” as Joe Biden is so fond of saying, then 3 or 4 of the 32 head coaches, general managers, and team owners would be black, but 75 percent of the players would be white or Hispanic. It’s doubtful that Flores is advocating for two-thirds of black players to be fired and replaced with whites.
Is there any reason, other than “discrimination,” why NFL rosters are still 100 percent male? Why is neither team in the upcoming Super Bowl starting a transgender female at left tackle?
In all my years of playing football, from high school to the NFL, I never heard any teammate of any race complain about a team’s racial composition. Players understand that sports are the ultimate meritocracy, where the currency of the realm is performance, not skin color or political correctness. If a player doesn’t think he’s getting enough playing time, it doesn’t do much good to cry “racism!” The only rational thing to do is to work harder and play better.
Part of the reason this wisdom hasn’t been applied to the coaching world is due to absurd racial quota systems like the “Rooney Rule” in the NFL, which forces teams to interview at least one black candidate for any major coaching or executive vacancy.
The absurdity of this practice can be illustrated by simply applying it to NFL roster vacancies. Imagine if every NFL team were forced to invite a white cornerback into training camp every season.No NFL team has started a white cornerback since Jason Sehorn in 2002. A white cornerback who fulfilled a team’s obligation under a “Sehorn Rule” would feel insecure and teammates would feel resentful, even if the player was qualified for the position and seriously considered for the job.
This is not a defense of the NFL. The league brought this upon themselves when they jumped in bed with the social justice radicals after the Kaepernick saga and doubled down after the George Floyd/BLM riots. They deserve this lawsuit and everything that’s coming to them.
The rest of America would do well to abandon the obsession with racial optics and skin-deep assessments of our fellow countrymen, or we’re heading toward the all-out racial conflict that the radical left seems obsessed with fomenting.
OTTAWA: The Justice Centre today challenged Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson over his accusation that peacefully protesting truckers are “a danger of major proportions that could result in serious harm to persons or substantial damage to property.”
Mayor Watson has not divulged publicly what facts he might rely on to justify his assessment of truckers as posing “a danger of major proportions,” in light of their law-abiding behaviour since arriving in Ottawa more than one week ago.
The definition of “emergency” under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act is “a situation or an impending situation that constitutes a danger of major proportions that could result in serious harm to persons or substantial damage to property and that is caused by the forces of nature, a disease or other health risk, an accident or an act whether intentional or otherwise;”
“This is a truly disturbing overreach and misuse of emergency powers,” stated lawyer Nicholas Wansbutter.
According to affidavit evidence filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the Freedom Convoy has been working closely with the Ottawa Police Service, the RCMP, and the Parliamentary Protective Service. It was one of the Freedom Convoy truckers who reported to police a property damage offence and an assault, committed by individuals not affiliated with the truckers. Convoy leaders have asked all truckers to refrain from honking their horns between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.
One of the witnesses in the court action has stated under oath that truckers and their supporters “are feeding the homeless on Wellington Street and filling their backpacks with food. Truckers have taken a whole trailer full of food to the homeless shelter. Truckers are maintaining the cleanliness of city streets, including picking up discarded masks on the ground, centralized garbage collection, shoveling snow at the War Memorial and the Terry Fox statue, and decorating and providing security for the War Memorial and Terry Fox statue.”
Another witness, an Ottawa resident, swears that “the truckers I have interacted with have, at all times, been friendly, courteous, humble, considerate and peaceful. I have not observed any aggressive or inappropriate behaviours.” He says the truckers are diverse, including Sikhs, Blacks, Aboriginals and others. He has “observed truckers decorating the tomb of the unknown soldier with flowers and guarding it” and has “not seen any violent or threatening behaviour.” He notes that “the truckers do not honk their horns at night. My everyday life has not been disrupted by any noise related to the Freedom Convoy during the day.” He asserts: “My ability to park and to travel in downtown Ottawa, or to and from Parliament Hill has not been impeded by the presence of the truckers.”
Another Ottawa resident, who works for Statistics Canada, describes reality on the ground as follows: “The protesters were peaceful and respectful, I saw no violence or harassment. I was not impeded in any way, and could walk about freely and safely. I did not see any hateful symbols, in fact, I saw an abundance of Canada flags and Quebec flags as well as countless signs calling for freedom and the end of Covid related mandates. I did see some anti-Trudeau flags using harsh language. However, I would describe the scene as a peaceful, pro-freedom demonstration. My everyday life has not been disrupted by any noise related to the downtown demonstrations.”
“There is no factual basis to support the Mayor’s declaration of an emergency,” concludes Mr. Wansbutter.
Ben Bartee writes at Daily Bell COVID Propaganda Roundup. Excerpts in italics with my bolds. H/T Tyler Durden
How the Biomedical State Maintains the ‘All the Experts Agree’ False Consensus
The latest updates on the “new normal” – chronicling the lies, distortions, and abuses by the ruling class.
We’ve previously explored the mind-numbing “experts say” mantra that the corporate media parrots non-stop. Talking heads incessantly implore the peasant class to “respect the science.”
The purpose is to create a mirage of consensus in order to discourage real journalists or normal people from looking into matters themselves. This tactic is pervasive, but nowhere has it been more widely employed than in the COVID era.
Because, if three key facts were permitted to infect the public consciousness, they would inevitably result in mass upheaval of the ruling class that perches on top of society, feeding on it like vultures:
A.) the original virus almost certainly escaped from a Wuhan lab (if it wasn’t purposely released; let’s not underestimate the hubris of the biomedical state). Worse, that leaky Chinese lab relied on funding from the United States National Institutes of Health (funneled through a “non-profit” called EcoHealth Alliance) to perform dangerous the gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
B.) The vaccines (which are actually mRNA gene therapies) do not work to prevent infection as promisedand cause extensive side effects that were covered up in the original trials.
C.) The “social distancing” lockdown measures – which plunged untold billions worldwide into poverty, death, and despair – were totally ineffective at preventing the spread of the virus: “Shelter-in-place orders had no detectable health benefits.” Imagine the criminality of all the suffering for no good reason.
At every turn, the “experts” got it wrong.
The biomedical state uses multiple mechanisms to discourage scientists from dissenting from the approved narrative
You’ve heard the talking point ad nauseam: “99% of scientists agree the vaccines are safe and effective.”
First of all, that figure is not vindicated by any actual polling; it’s just an offhand catchphrase.
Second, what happens to scientists who deviate from the “safe and effective” slogan?
♦ Their message will get censored or distorted (or both) ♦ Might lose their professional license ♦ Ostracized by their peers ♦ If they’re a researcher, they’ll risk wrecking their career and losing critical funding from NIH and pharma corps.
JFK Jr. explains:
“As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci dispenses $6.1 billion in annual taxpayer-provided funding for scientific research, allowing him to dictate the subject, content, and outcome of scientific health research across the globe. Fauci uses the financial clout at his disposal to wield extraordinary influence over hospitals, universities, journals, and thousands of influential doctors and scientists—whose careers and institutions he has the power to ruin, advance, or reward.”
And, You’ll get smeared in the corporate media
Exhibit A: Epidemiologists at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford – three of the most highly-regarded mainstream institutes of higher learning in the world – authored the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020.
The gist of the document (which you can read here) is that a COVID Zero policy (the elimination of the SARS-CoV-2) virus in the population is a pipe dream. The social distancing and lockdown orders had devastating effects on public physical and mental health. Those at risk of severe illness or death from infectious disease should be protected while the non-vulnerable (the vast majority of the population) should resume normal life.
Those rational, science-based propositions should have been aired publicly in a healthy national debate.
But, predictably, open debate is not how Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, NIH Director, do things. Instead of debating the merits of the Barrington Declaration, Collins sent an email to Fauci on Oct 8 (later leaked) that read:
“This proposal from three fringe epidemiologists… seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt and Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t think like that on line yet – is it underway?”
Does that sound like the language of a public health servant doing God’s work to protect the people from a deadly virus – or that of a cynical political operative?
Is coordinating a media hitjob on ideological opponents part of the NIH Director’s job description?
More importantly, though, if they can orchestrate a smear campaign against three “fringe” epidemiologists from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, what signal does that send to a run-of-the-mill MD in Wisconsin who might be inclined to ask critical questions?
The message is obvious: “shut your mouth or we’ll come for you.”
It doesn’t matter how good the analyst is if the data is fake…
The conclusion will likely be faulty – even if the scientist is immune to the social pressures to conform to the narrative.
We reported previously on Pfizer’s vaxx trial fraud in which the company’s contractor intentionally hid side effects of the drug.
The reported COVID fatality rate was dramatically over-counted by the governing authorities.
Hospitals counted fatal motorcycle accidents as COVID deaths merely because the victim tested positive for the virus before succumbing to his injuries.
CDC Director Refuses to Answer: Dying ‘With COVID’ vs Dying ‘From COVID
Even the corporate media has been forced to confront the obvious rouse.
Via Newsweek:
“‘When asked by Fox News anchor Bret Baier if there was a breakdown of how many of the 836,000 deaths in the U.S. were ‘from COVID’ or ‘with COVID,’ Walensky gave a non-committal answer.”
Notice that Baier asked about the alleged 836,000 deaths over the course of the two-year pandemic.Walensky, in a bid to avoid answering, finds a lame excusing by pivoting to the Omicron death count, which is barely weeks old.
Do you think that the average “expert” — a college professor teaching public health at a mid-size state school, or an epidemiologist researching Ebola or some other totally unrelated pathogen – has the time, resources, or personal dedication to parse the CDC’s COVID bullshit from the veritas?
Or are they just going to follow the lead of the “expert” higher up on the food chain?
Is the average scientist human or superhuman?
The above is how the “consensus”-rigging game is played, and why you should never again place a modicum of trust in the rotten biomedical establishment, nor the scientists who vocally support it.
Supporters arrive at Parliament Hill for the Freedom Truck Convoy to protest against Covid-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions in Ottawa, Canada, on January 29, 2022. – Hundreds of truckers drove their giant rigs into the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday as part of a self-titled “Freedom Convoy” to protest vaccine mandates required to cross the US border. LARS HAGBERG / AFP/GETTY IMAGES
If the prime minister of a North African or Middle Eastern nation was forced into hiding by a protest occupying his capital city, Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton would materialize from thin air to call for U.S.-backed regime change.
“Government Loses Popular Support,” newspaper headlines would blare, amid calls for sanctions, State Department-NGO initiatives and the inevitable “nation-building” exercises.
Justin Trudeau can rest easy, however.
No such song and dance routine is in store for America’s northerly neighbor despite thousands of protesting truckers in Ottawa sending the prime minister underground. While imagining intervention in America’s northerly neighbor rightly seems risible, it does bring President George W. Bush’s “soft bigotry of low expectations” to mind. We expect Canadians can handle their own affairs. Those Arab Spring nations of yesteryear obviously needed the Western man’s help, though.
But increasingly, it appears Canadian politicians are not actually demonstrating an ability to manage their own affairs, nor to bring logic or rationality to this scenario, brought about by some of the most restrictive COVID-19 policies in the world.
Nor, until now, has it appeared they cared when anyone raised objections to those policies.
Only when thousands of truckers replete with their 18-wheel freedom-fighting machines descended on Ottawa did the Canadian government begin to acknowledge the existence of dissenters in their midst. This very fact is the political casus belli for the protesters on Parliament Hill. It is also why they shouldn’t leave until some very concrete demands are both met and kept. There should be a prolonged presence of truckers in Canada’s capital.
It appears to be the only language Trudeau’s government understands.
Were it not for a compliant national media willing to almost exclusively echo the claims of the government, the situation could have already resolved itself with a hasty Trudeau exit from office.
Canada’s broadcasters have focused their attention on the appearance of two flags—one Nazi, one Confederate—at protests over the past week. The culprits remain as elusive as the January 6th pipe bomber, though their presence has allowed the government to paint tens of thousands as extremists, racists or worse.
According to the CBC, “there’s concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as the protest grows, and perhaps even instigating it from the outset.”
[Note: Journalists showed great imagination in making the leap linking the convoy to Putin. No such creativity was applied to finding the identity of a person, the only one in the crowd wearing a mask, only one who waved a swastika. I’ll do the media lackeys’ work for them: It was someone who knew the act served the interests of the leftist media and government, so most likely Antifa or a wannabe.]
Even when acting Conservative Party leader Candice Bergen (no, not that one) tasked the government with offering an olive branch and reaching a resolution to the impasse on Parliament Hill, Trudeau’s stand-in, Chrystia Freeland, pivoted to blanket statements condemning the swastika, as if such condemnation were even necessary in the Canadian parliamentary chamber circa 2022.
Bergen rightly riposted, “That, I’m afraid, is classic gaslighting.”
It’s an appropriate characterization of the Canadian government’s approach thus far. A prime minister in hiding, a national capital in counter-lockdown, and the government’s most critical concern is the freshly unfolded flag of a defunct foreign navy that existed almost 200 years ago and 1600 miles away.
Meanwhile, the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta are bucking the national trend, announcing an end to COVID-related restrictions. It’s quick progress for an actual peaceful protest that has yet to cause billions of dollars in damages, injure or kill any cops or seek anything but constitutionally guaranteed liberties.
It is of course a back-handed compliment to right-populism that the antagonistic shrieks are less, “Oh my God, what are they doing?” and more, “Oh my God what might they secretly believe in?” It’s also a sign that there is a long road ahead, as politicians and the media attempt to ascribe ulterior motives to the protesters’ actions.
Like France’s gilets jaunes, Canada’s “freedom convoy” may find itself entrenched against its own establishment for some time, and they might just inspire American counterparts.
Yes, the old communist call of “workers of the world, unite!” may have been successfully appropriated by the political Right. The next line isn’t, “No, not like that!” but, truer to what Marx originally expressed, “You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
The denigration of the Canadian trucker protest convoy exemplifies how freedom is now the biggest villain of the Covid-19 pandemic. A Washington Post cartoonist portrayed the trucker convoy as “fascism” incarnate while another Post column derided the “toxic ‘Freedom Convoy.’” Anyone who resists any government command is apparently now a public enemy.
The trucker protest was spurred by the Canadian government’s sweeping Covid vaccine mandate. Many truckers believe the risks of the vaccine outweighs the benefit and, more importantly, that they have the right to control their own bodies. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared on Monday, “There is no place in our country for threats, violence or hatred.” Except for the hatred Trudeau whips up by denouncing vaccine mandate opponents as “racist” and “misogynistic.” And except for the “threats” and “violence” used by government enforcement agents to compel submission to any pandemic decree issued by Trudeau or other politicians.
Since the start of this pandemic, many people who boasted of their trust in “science and data” also believed that absolute power would keep them safe. According to their scorecard, anyone who objected to government commands was the equivalent of a heretic who must be condemned if not banished from everyplace except the cemetery. North of the border, Quebec epitomizes this intolerance with its new edict prohibiting unvaccinated individuals from shopping at Costco or Walmart.
The same critics who latch onto any obnoxious behavior by a few wayward Canadian truckers (MSNBC denounced them as a “cult”)’ to condemn freedom are also happy to exonerate any American politician who pointlessly destroyed freedom during the pandemic with bizarre edicts. In December 2020, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti banned all unnecessary “travel, including, without limitation, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit.” The mayor (who was caught violating California mask mandates at the NFC championship game) offered no evidence to justify placing four million residents under house arrest. Governor Ralph Northam dictated that all Virginians must stay indoors from midnight until 5 a.m, with a few narrow exceptions. Federal judge William Stickman IV condemned Pennsylvania’s restrictions:
“Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.”
Preventing politicians from obliterating freedom is now the worst form of tyranny. On Thanksgiving Eve 2020, the Supreme Court struck down Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s edict that limited religious gatherings in New York to ten or fewer people while permitting far more leeway for businesses to operate. The Court declared that Cuomo’s rules were “far more restrictive than any Covid-related regulations that have previously come before the Court… and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus.” An American Civil Liberties Union official fretted that “the freedom to worship… does not include a license to harm others or endanger public health.” Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe and Cornell professor Michael Dorf warned that the Supreme Court was becoming “a place like Gilead — the theocratic and misogynist country in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”
Many progressives talk as if America faces a choice between reckless freedom and paternalism – i.e., submission to a benevolent elite. But regardless of Fauci’s boundless conceit, omniscient officials have yet to come to the rescue. Government agencies have blundered catastrophically since the start of the pandemic.
The Centers for Disease Control bollixed America’s initial response by sending out faulty, contaminated test kits to health agencies that failed to detect the rapidly spreading virus. Governors panicked and shut down schools, resulting in vast losses in learning and widening the achievement gap between affluent and low-income students. The vast majority of small businesses were locked down and thousands were bankrupted in a futile effort to prevent an airborne virus from continuing to spread. Placing scores of millions of people under house arrest led to record-breaking fatalities for drug overdoses and a tidal wave of depression and anxiety. New York City’s covid vaccine passport regime failed to prevent the Big Apple from becoming the hottest spot in the nation for the omicron variant.
President Biden portrayed the vaccines as a magic bullet and falsely promised that people who got injected would not get Covid. The C.D.C. stopped counting “breakthrough” cases of Covid among the fully vaccinated, paving the way for a resurgence of the virus that has now infected more than 70 million Americans. Or maybe 200+ million Americans since C.D.C. previously stated that only one in four cases are diagnosed and reported. Whatever. The Food and Drug Administration is seeking to delay fully disclosing Pfizer’s application for its Covid vaccine approval for 75 years. After Biden issued a mandate that forced hospitals to fire healthy unvaccinated nurses, the CDC said it was OK for hospitals to rely on Covid positive nurses to treat patients – one of the biggest absurdities of the pandemic.
Freedom is not a panacea for every challenge in life. But it is far superior to boundless submission to tinhorn dictators who know far less than they claim. Politicians like Trudeau and Biden who fuel mass rage against any group that does not kowtow to officialdom are sowing seeds of hatred that will proliferate long after the pandemic ends.
In the long run, people have more to fear from politicians than from viruses.
Which poll do you think better reflects the mood of Canada? The professional one with a select panel of participants or the reaction of tens of thousands on social media?
As the Freedom Convoy 2022 rolls toward Ottawa, a national poll reveals “only one-in-three Canadian’s fully support allowing unvaccinated truckers to cross the US/Canada border.”
A “national survey,” posted Thursday by Maru Public Opinion, indicates just “28%” are for truckers crossing border “without any difficulty in order to deliver food, goods, and other materials to a variety of Canadian destinations.”
Says Maru: “On the other hand, a full majority (72%) of Canadians believe that the borders should be flat out closed to truckers unless they are either fully vaccinated (36%) or, as an alternative middle-ground between the two extremes of being barred or having unfettered access, they show proof of the results of a negative COVID test taken within the previous 72-hours (36%).”
But unlike with most polls, this time there is something to compare it to. For example, while highly-respected Maru’s survey, put out by the company and not paid for by a sponsor, said it polled 1,500 people across the country, a GoFundMe page posted this month has raised more than $6.2 million from more than 80,000 donors.
And a Freedom Convoy 2022 Facebook page — Convoy to Ottawa 2022 — has more than 700,000 followers. Not exactly a “small fringe” group of people, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed Wednesday.
Trudeau’s harsh words toward this group, and the scrutiny the media has put it under, outweighs vetting other polls typically get.
Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre dealt with that double standard Thursday as he asked reporters “when was the last time the press gallery went through the social media posts of every single person attending a left-wing protest to find and report every crazy comment made” while saying it’s wrong to “disparage the thousands of hard-working, law-abiding and peaceful truckers, who quite frankly have kept all of you alive.”
Some professional polls may show low support for the convoy, but tens of thousands of Canadians, who put their money where their mouths are, may disagree.
Update Feb. 4:
Canadian truckers protesting COVID-19 rules said they are lawyering up after GoFundMe suspended their fundraising page. The page surpassed its $10 million goal, but GoFundMe pulled the plug as it investigates the effort for potential violations.
“This fundraiser is currently paused and under review to ensure it complies with our terms of service and applicable laws and regulations,” read a notice at the top of the convoy’s GoFundMe page. “Our team is working 24/7 and doing all we can to protect both organizers and donors. Thank you for your patience.”
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a Calgary-based firm, confirmed it is representing the Freedom Convoy 2022 in Ottawa and “has a team of lawyers on the ground providing legal assistance and advice.”
The U.S. press, like the U.S. government, is a corrupt and troubled institution. Corrupt not so much in the sense that it accepts bribes but in a systemic sense. It fails to do what it claims to do, what it should do, and what society expects it to do.
The news media and the government are entwined in a vicious circle of mutual manipulation, mythmaking, and self-interest. Journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. Too often, the crises are not really crises but joint fabrications. The two institutions have become so ensnared in a symbiotic web of lies that the news media are unable to tell the public what is true and the government is unable to govern effectively. That is the thesis advanced by Paul H. Weaver, a former political scientist (at Harvard University), journalist (at Fortune magazine), and corporate communications executive (at Ford Motor Company), in his provocative analysis entitled News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works.
The news media and the government have created a charade that serves their own interests but misleads the public. Officials oblige the media’s need for drama by fabricating crises and stage-managing their responses, thereby enhancing their own prestige and power. Journalists dutifully report those fabrications. Both parties know the articles are self-aggrandizing manipulations and fail to inform the public about the more complex but boring issues of government policy and activity.
What has emerged, Weaver argues, is a culture of lying. “The culture of lying,” he writes, “is the discourse and behavior of officials seeking to enlist the powers of journalism in support of their goals, and of journalists seeking to co-opt public and private officials into their efforts to find and cover stories of crisis and emergency response. It is the medium through which we Americans conduct most of our public business (and a lot of our private business) these days.” The result, he says, is a distortion of the constitutional role of government into an institution that must continually resolve or appear to resolve crises; it functions in “a new and powerful permanent emergency mode of operation.”
Wary of making decisions based on opinion or belief, the U.S. public has come to rely on facts, data, surveys, and presumably scientific studies. People are increasingly reluctant to believe any assertion that is not supported by statistical research. Yet, Crossen writes, “more and more of the information we use to buy, elect, advise, acquit and heal has been created not to expand our knowledge but to sell a product or advance a cause.”
A growing industry has thus developed to create the research to legitimize policy positions or marketing objectives. Public policy debates now commonly revolve around competing estimates of cost, effectiveness, or risk, rather than around the intrinsic merits of a proposal. Much of the health care debate raged around differing estimates of the numbers of citizens without health coverage and the costs of the various proposals to cover them. When President Bill Clinton promised Congress that he would rely on the forecasts of federal spending and deficits of the Congressional Budget Office rather than on those of the executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget, the representatives and senators cheered; they consider the CBO’s forecasts to be more favorable to Congress’s spending proclivities than those of the more cautious OMB.
Concocted or inaccurate surveys and studies taint our perceptions of what is true, and they distort public policy debates. Crossen concurs with Weaver that the media’s desire for drama encourages the distortion and corruption of public decision making. “The media are willing victims of bad information, and increasingly they are producers of it. They take information from self-interested parties and add to it another layer of self-interest—the desire to sell information.”
A press driven by drama and crises creates a government driven by response to crises. Such an “emergency government can’t govern,” Weaver concludes. “Not only does public support for emergency policies evaporate the minute they’re in place and the crisis passes, but officials acting in the emergency mode can’t make meaningful public policies. According to the classic textbook definition, government is the authoritative allocation of values, and emergency government doesn’t authoritatively allocate values.”
Footnote:
If you read the excerpts or followed the link, you will have realized this knowledge was published in the Harvard Business Review May-June 1995.
There are several interlinked dangers to all of this. 
Ben Bartee writes at Daily Bell 
Science Matters 