Memorial Day:
Land of the Free?
Memorial Day has been observed since the late 1860s. It is a day for mourning and remembering those who have fallen in the service of our country. It represents those who have sacrificed to keep our country free. I wonder what many would think of their country today.
For many of us, the “land of the free and the home of the brave” means that the United States has, through its Constitution, imperfectly but nobly been a beacon of light in the world. It has represented individualism, opportunity, a place where you succeed through your own hard work and merit. Government was always seen as a necessary evil that does best when it does least. And its citizens rise to protect those liberties whenever and wherever threatened. Is that where we are today?
Alas, we have seen those freedoms erode. Fascism is a political system that is defined by a collusion and integration between government and big business. It is the embodiment of the idea that countries are best ruled by the elites. It can happen overnight by revolution … or it can happen slowly and organically. But when “experts” or elites march in and out between government and business and work together to control the populace, you have essentially a fascistic government. We are well down that path.
And when these forces of government and big business collude together, the public at large is no longer being served but rather, the elites serve and assist each other while controlling the populace; not enabling them to live their best free lives. And now we have more examples of just how corrupt our government has become.
From Hillary Clinton getting away with using her personal computer for official State Department business until now, the high and mighty have flouted law and used back channels to conduct official business (read: shenanigans) in ways that allow them to not be caught. And apparently they laugh the whole way through.
You likely remember Robert Mueller’s Office of Special Counsel that pursued Donald Trump trying (and failing) to prove that he colluded with Russia to manipulate the 2016 election. Do you recall that its bloated staff of prosecutors and other lawyers (at least 18 of them) not at all suspiciously wiped clean at least 27 cell phones of their data before they could be subpoenaed to see if there was any illegality or criminality or collusion in their actions. All claimed innocent reasons of course and were never investigated. And of course the FBI gave Clinton plenty of time to bury any bodies (metaphorically … I hope) before investigating and deciding that perhaps some poor choices were made in taking official US business into the privacy (and insecurity) of her home server, but nothing worth pursuing. And thus naturally no charges were filed.
One might compare that to poor Donald Trump’s facing hundreds of years of prison time if convicted on all counts he is being charged with. The current case keeping him in a courtroom instead of on the campaign trail is of course over the “crime” of his accountant writing “legal expenses” on a check to his lawyer that may have been to cover hush money payments. That’s almost as evil as his overvaluing his Mar-a-Lago property in a loan application, according to a judge in his other New York case. That case of course cost him half a billion dollars just for the right to appeal the judge's unilateral decision. I guess half a billion is now the standard being set for anyone who mis-appraises a property on a bank loan application. Or do you think perhaps Trump got special treatment? Could that alone be proof that Trump is NOT one of the elite ruling class. Who let him in?
Never cross the deep state. One has to admit that Trump was forewarned by his good friend (not) Chuck Schumer, Senator from New York. Warning Trump not to challenge the intelligence community he once said on the steps of the Supreme Court: “They have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.” And indeed they do. Is one of those ways inducing an “insurrection"?
All of that brings me to the latest “bombshell” (everything is a bombshell these days … have you noticed?!).
I have brought to you over the years more and more data showing how corrupt the healthcare side of government has become. One can no longer trust studies or experts or publications or esteemed universities. All are bought and paid for. Sadly for pharma, it costs more and more to keep more and more people and institutions content and compliant. They have to provide kickbacks for government agencies and officials. They must finance (and direct) research at universities. They must pay ‘independent’ clinical trial labs to push the results that they need. They must buy ads in the medical journals. And they must buy ads on all the media stations and social media platforms to keep them all in their corner. It gets expensive.
Happily for them, the government, their cronies, assist them by guaranteeing drug approvals for high priced products and even confiscate tax money to purchase these products (to give to us consumers at a discounted price or for “free”) so pharma always has plenty of cash on hand to spread around the room, so to speak. Could it be that this is the greatest factor in the inflationary spiral of healthcare costs? Someone needs to do the math on that sometime.
I have also previously pointed out some of the kickbacks and ‘royalties’ that members of the elite get from pharma. It is both an incestuous and symbiotic relationship between the two. But this is the beauty of a system that has FOIA laws. The public gets to request any documents created by their public servants. Originally meant to be the Freedom Of Information Act, it unfortunately has turned into the ‘Flouting Obligations Intentionally Act.’ How so?
We already know about many attempts to get around having to give up records. Often the records are hidden. They may be totally redacted (national security considerations of course … if you believe them). Requests are fought and delayed. Agencies will plead that they have no time to pull all the records requested. Not enough personnel, they will say. Not enough budget to handle the request. Etc etc etc. It actually can be an arduous task for a government agency to produce FOIA’d records, so they most definitely have my sympathies. I mean do you realize what a struggle it is to painstakingly go through the documents first to remove any embarrassing and illegal activity; oops, I mean classified and sensitive information?
On to the latest example:
Dr. David Morens is senior scientific advisor at the NIAID, and served as a right hand man to Dr. Anthony Fauci for about 25 years. One might say that they knew each other well and had each other’s trust. So it was an enlightening moment to have Dr. Morens testify in front of the Congressional oversight committee. Here is the entire testimony:
(roughly an hour and 40 minutes).
Or here is a brief clip with some highlights: brief clips (thirteen and a half minutes).
Dr. Morens testimony has been parsed and gone viral because it demonstrates the breathtakingly cavalier attitude towards the public’s right to know what their government is up to. Morens apparently spent considerable energy and time covering the tracks of our health agency actors. In emails that were (thankfully) recovered, he admits to a variety of ways that oversight-avoidance could be achieved. Things like: intentionally misspelling words to make them hard to search for (OK - I’ve done that one myself; to avoid being deleted from social spaces), using private (here we go again) email accounts instead of official government accounts as required, deleting immediately any “smoking guns,” using paper that can be easily destroyed, and so on.
But his testimony did not end there. There was also talk of “kickbacks” for helping to restore funding to EcoHealth Alliance. He also wrote about binge drinking and sex and some other rather inappropriate workplace topics. Here are just a few quotes I pulled from the video.
“Tony does not want me to connect anything to him.”
“... That email fell into the hands of the Congressman probably via FOIA of someone who didn’t delete it as I did delete Peter’s emails and all others related to origin. Mine was erased long ago. I verified that today and I feel pretty sure Tony’s was too.”
“You are right and I need to be more careful. However as I mentioned once before I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I’m FOIA’d but before the search starts. So I think we are all safe.” [Note, the person hired to handle FOIA requests apparently took her job to be how to get out of FOIA requests and not how to comply with them … hmmm]
After a grant to EcoHealth Alliance was distributed: “Do I get a kickback? Too much fooking money. Do you deserve it all? Let’s discuss.”
And it goes on from there.
The FDA has far and away the biggest collection of clinical trial data in the world. This is an invaluable resource. Or at least it could be IF it was made available to independent evaluators and researchers. Reportedly in 2018 the agency began a program of proactively publishing some select clinical data … but put an end to it 2 years later. So results have to be FOIA’d and I have a bit of experience with how that goes (not well). Delays, legal challenges, redactions, meaningless pages, and other methods are used to make the request as painful and useless as possible. It is not for nothing that the FDA has been called the Foot Dragging Agency.
Data secrecy is what this is about. And trust is what is completely lacking at this point. I don’t believe that this is the liberty that our soldiers had in mind, that they fought and died for.
Happy Memorial Day.
In health,
DocofLastResort