Bruce Dowbiggin
Three Books to End the Silence
From the Brownstone Institute
My first thought upon reading it was: I cannot believe that this was allowed to be published! That’s the interesting part. Despite every attempt by the national security state and the vast army of censorial bureaucrats, we still have enough freedom to get the word out, for now.
Think of this. In the time since the Covid crisis has passed, no aspect of any federal power that was deployed to wreck a functioning society has been repealed. Not one law, regulation, edict, or power.
Some courts have struck down certain bureaucratic practices, such as the nationwide mask mandate and the eviction moratorium, which were, respectively, huge attacks on bodily autonomy and property rights. Those were ruled inadmissible, at tremendous expense to plaintiffs.
Otherwise, the bureaucracy has not budged an inch.
At the onset of this disaster, the CDC started simply posting edicts. They started with washing hands and staying home if you were sick. Quickly, they got carried away. Every business needed stay-at-home policies, canceled meetings, posted signs warning of omnipresent danger, sanitizer stations everywhere, no sharing of pens and scissors, plus Plexiglas everywhere.
Any CDC bureaucrat with logins could add a point of “guidance” but for most people, they were law. What a rush for the rulemakers! The edicts were passed on to state health departments, which sent them to counties, and they landed in HR departments in every company. For practical purposes, these were law to most people, because the consequences of disobeying were essentially unknown.
What about now? The CDC simply deleted its webpage. No apologies, no repeals, no reforms, just a delete button. It was there then it was gone.
When first issued it looked like this. A year later, it became a vast machinery of control, as you can see here. With each new update, the screws tightened. (Someone could have a great time parsing every word of every iteration and documenting it.)
Complying with everything would require vast expenditure and a crazed kabuki dance of extreme germophobia, such that it is hard to see how business could get done at all. Every sentence talks of guidance and advice but none cites “science” much less any authority for how any of this was legal. And yet millions of businesses either shut forever or experienced massive financial stress, which hurt everyone. Of course some enterprises thrived: those lucky enough to be considered “essential” and received the bulk of federal funding!
It’s more than obvious that we cannot depend on the federal government to get us to the truth about what happened. Vast amount of content on Brownstone.org explores this daily. In addition there are three books that everyone needs to digest now to get a full sense of the whole. There was much more going on that simple bureaucratic incompetence.
Our Enemy, the Government by Ramesh Thakur is the most scientifically sophisticated and yet accessible account of the amazing screw-ups of public health during this period. Keep in mind that the policy response was mostly the same all over the world but for a few nations. Thakur’s focus is on Australia but people in every nation will recognize the pattern. Each chapter takes on a new element, from the wild exaggeration of the universal threat of Covid, to the faulty testing regime, to the death misclassifications, to the spending mania, to the flurry of insane edicts on masking, vaccination, and forced human separation. It’s a tour de force for the ages, and leaves a devastating impression.
Keep in mind that Thakur is not just some writer. He was once the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations under Kofi Annan in addition to being a famed scholar. He has risked everything in writing this book but once he started peeling away at the onion that is the Covid response, he simply could not stop. He had to do the right thing and go the full way. The book is overwhelming in terms of charts, data, evidence, and citations but this is what is necessary to smash the paradigm. His main concern is the health and well-being of the human population. It was this that was wrecked over three years.
Next comes Rand Paul’s Deception. Throughout these awful years, Senator Paul has been an absolute godsend, and for two reasons. He is a medical doctor and extremely smart, so he was never intimidated by Anthony Fauci’s pseudoscientific gobbledygook. He saw right through the guy from the very beginning.
Crucially, as a US Senator, he had unusual access to Fauci that enabled him to question him directly. This is something that Fauci had tried to avoid from the beginning. We know from his email and scheduling that Fauci was extremely careful through the whole period to grant only friendly interviews on captured venues. This was a main objective, and precisely why he got away with it. But with Rand in the Senate, he was entitled to a limited amount of time to ask questions. He used every minute well. The results are gold.
His book is the full account of how Fauci worked from day one to avoid any culpability for the funding of the Wuhan lab through third parties that might have been responsible for the leak of the virus. The book, then, reveals the scandal of the century. Fauci has been enormously powerful, controlling billions in grant funding. He deployed all his power, money, and connections to avoid his direct professional responsibilities and scrub his record to make himself unaccountable. Rand has all the receipts, and bravely presents them in this important book.
To deepen the plot, we have The Wuhan Coverup by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This is a much more focused and tighter work than his previous book on Fauci. I swear that anyone who grabs it and reads it will never think about government the same way. It’s that powerful and comprehensive. At issue for Kennedy is the US bioweapons program that began after the Second World War and continues to this day. It is responsible for vast corruption, the empowerment and entanglement of pharmaceutical companies, and the use of secretive classification powers to keep the American people in the dark.
If you suspected that the national security apparatus had some role in the pandemic response, you would be correct about that. This book is the one that has gone further than any other to document this scary reality. The Department of Defense and the CIA had a huge role in making rules for the rest of the population to prepare the way for the presumed antidote that was rolled out with tax funding and legal indemnification against harms, by companies that owned the patents and had publicly traded stocks you could buy. Nothing about this whole machinery has anything to do with things like freedom and democracy but there it is, malicious corporatism in a nutshell.
RFK has laid it all out in eye-popping page after page. My first thought upon reading it was: I cannot believe that this was allowed to be published! That’s the interesting part. Despite every attempt by the national security state and the vast army of censorial bureaucrats, we still have enough freedom to get the word out, for now. This is why it is so important to get this book now and digest its contents. There could come a time when we won’t be allowed to read such things. That is clearly the ambition in any case.
Did the pandemic response affect your life? Your kids? Your community? Yes, and profoundly. As a citizen you have every reason to care about how and why terrible things were done to us.
It’s not enough just to forget the whole thing like a bad dream. We cannot just delete the page from the history books, as the CDC has done, and pretend like it is over and done and nothing needs to change. We must deal with reality. And these books take us to new levels of understanding. That is the first step toward change.
Author
It can be safely said that the 2024 U.S. presidential election couldn’t have gone much worse for legacy media in that country. Their biases, conceits and outright falsehoods throughout the arduous years-long slog toward Nov. 5 were exposed that night. Resulting in the simultaneous disaster (for them) of Donald Trump winning a thunderous re-election and their predictive polling being shown to be Democratic propaganda.
Only a handful of non-establishment pollsters (Rasmussen, AtlasIntel) got Trump’s electoral college and overall vote correct. Example: One poll by Ann Selzer in Iowa—a highly-rated pollster with a supposedly strong record—showed a huge swing towards Harris in the final week of the election race, putting her three points up over Trump. He ended up winning Iowa by 13.2 points (Selzer now says she’s retiring.)
Throughout, these experts seemed incapable of finding half the voter pool. By putting their thumb on the scale during debates, the representatives of the so-called Tiffany networks and newspapers signalled abdication of their professional code. Their reliance on scandal-sheet stories was particularly glaring.
Just a few lowlights: “the brouhaha over a shock comedian at a Trump rally calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”. Unhinged outgoing POTUS Biden then called GOP voters “garbage”. So Trump made an appearance as a garbage man, to the snarky disapproval of CBS News chief anchor Nora O’Donnell.
Then there was Whoopi Goldberg on The View predicting Trump will “break up interracial marriages and redistribute the white spouses: “He’s going to deport and you, put the white guy with someone else… The man is out there!” Media ran with this one, too.
Worse, disinformation and lying reached such a proportion that Team Trump turned its campaign away from the networks and legacy papers down the stretch, creating a new information pathway of podcasts and social media sites (such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Adin Ross) that promise to be the preferred route for future candidates looking for non-traditional voters. A few prominent media owners sought to save themselves by refusing to endorse a presidential candidate, but the resulting tantrum by their Kamala-loving staff negated the effort.
In the past, poor performances by the Media Party might be dismissed or ignored. But the cataclysmic ratings drops for CNN and MSNBC paired with collapse in sales for blue-blood rags such as the New York Times, Washington Post and L.A. Times spoke to the public’s disgust with people they’ve always trusted to play it straight.
(Now Comcast has announced it’s spinning off MSNBC and its news bundle to save their profitable businesses. Staff members in these places are now panicking. As such the new administration promises to be indifferent to the former media powers-that-be as Trump mounts radical plans to recast the U.S. government. )
As noted here the disgraceful exercise in journalism was cheered on by their compatriots here in Canada. “In the hermetically sealed media world of Canada, natives take their cues from CNN and MSNBC talking points both of which employ Canadians in highly visible roles. (Here’s expat Ali Velshi famously describing on NBC that the 2020 George Floyd riots that burned for weeks— destroying billions in damages while resulting in multipole deaths— as “generally peaceful”.)
The narratives of Russiagate, drinking bleach, “fine people” to Hunter Biden’s laptop— long ago debunked down south— are still approved wisdom in Canada’s chattering class. Especially if America’s conflagration election can be used to demonstrate the good sense and judgment of Canada’s managerial and media class.
The clincher for star-struck Canadians was the overwhelming Kamala love from the Hollywood crowd. Virtually every high-profile actor/ singer/ writer embraced the woman who was parachuted into the nomination in a coup— even as the same glitterati raved about anti-democratic Trump. From Beyoncé to Bilie Eilish to Bruce Springsteen, their support was been a winner in Canada’s fangirl/ fanboy culture.”
Talk about backing a loser. Which leaves us asking what to expect from formerly respected media in the upcoming (it will come, won’t it?) defenestration of Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, probably in spring of 2025. One Toronto Star piece might provide a clue to the bunkered approach of Canada’s globalists. “Europe is leaving Donald Trump’s America behind. Should Canada do the same? As American democracy dives into darkness, Canada is facing difficult choices.”
CPC leader Pierre Poilievre has made it abundantly clear his thoughts on the bias of media. To save billions, he is making a major overhaul— even closure of CBC (not Radio Canada)— as a campaign pledge. He’s also said he will remove the slush fund now propping up failed establishment news organizations that employ unionized workers bent of crushing the Conservatives.
His scorn is obvious after watching media’s reverential treatment of Trudeau’s fake “murdered” Rez children stunt or the silence accompanying PMJT’s sacking of his indigenous Justice minister Jodie Wilson Raybould. Lately, a deadpan Poilievre humiliated a callow CBC reporter quoting “experts” by asking her “what experts?” Her unpreparedness leaves her floundering as Poilievre calls her question another “CBC smear job”.
Perhaps the classic Poilievre humbling of a reporter occurred in 2023 in a Kelowna apple orchard when a reporter seeking to score points with his Woke colleagues saw the bushwhack rebound on him. After numerous failed attempts at belling the cat, the local reporter played his ace card.
Question: Why should Canadians trust you with their vote, given … y’know … not, not just the sort of ideological inclination in terms of taking the page out of Donald Trump’s book, but, also —
Poilievre: (incredulous) What are you talking about? What page? What page? Can you gimme a page? Gimme the page. You keep saying that … “
No page was produced and the cringeworthy interview collapsed.
Needless to say, the reporter was absolved by his water-carrying colleagues. Here was Shannon Proudfoot of the Toronto Star: “Kicking a journalist in the shins over and over then turning the exchange into a social-media flex is telling on yourself…” Venerable CBC panelist/ Star columnist Chantal Hébert echoed the pauvre p’tit take. “Agreed”.
For these press box placeholders it’s all too reminiscent of the acid-drenched style of former PM Stephen Harper, a stance that turned them to Trudeau cheerleaders in 2015. Which is to say we shouldn’t have high hopes for balance when the writ is finally dropped.
Poilievre has several more ministers (Melissa Lantsman, Garrett Genuis) skilled in exposing media imbalance, so we can expect full-blown pushback from the paid-for media from the usual suspects when Trudeau finally succumbs to reality. One drawback for the Conservatives could be the absence of national podcasters such as Rogan or Von to which they can pivot.
But make no mistake, However much Canada’s press corps denies it, the public has turned away from Mr Blackface and the politics of privilege. They’d best anticipate a rough ride ahead.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
In forty-years-plus of covering sports you develop hobby horses. Issues that re-appear continuously over time. In our case, one of those issues has been pro hockey’s development model and the NCAA’s draconian rules for its participants. Which was better, and why couldn’t the sides reach a more reasonable model?
In the case of hockey the NCAA’s ban on any player who played a single game in the Canadian Hockey League created a harsh dilemma for hockey prodigies in Canada and the U.S. Throw your lot in with the CHL, hoping to be drafted by the NHL, or play in a secondary league like the USHL till you were eligible for the NCAA. Prospects in the CHL’s three leagues — the OHL, QMJHL and WHL —were classified as professional by the NCAA because they get $600 a month for living expenses, losing Division I eligibility after 48 hours of training camp. The stipend isn’t considered income for personal tax purposes.”
Over the decades we’ve spoken with many parents and players trying to parse this equation. It was a heartbreaking scene when they gambled on a CHL career that gave them no life skills or education. Or the promised NCAA golden goose never appeared after playing in a lower league for prime development years.
There were tradeoffs. NCAA teams played fewer games, CHL teams played a pro-like schedule. The NCAA awarded scholarships (which could be withdrawn) while the CHL created scholarships for after a career in the league (rules that players getting NHL contracts lost those scholarships has been withdrawn). There were more contrasts.
As we wrote here in 2021, it might have stayed this way but for a tsunami created by the antitrust issue of Name Image Likeness for NCAA players who were not paid for the use of their NIL. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the issue in 2015 it warned the NCAA that its shamateurism scheme had to change. That created revolution in the NCAA. Athletes now receive healthy compensation for their image in video and digital products. They can also take million-dollar compensation from sponsors and boosters.
Portals allow them to skip from team to team to find millions in compensation. One of the many changes in the new NCAA was its prohibition against CHL players. To forestall future lawsuits costing millions, it recently made hockey players eligible for the same revenues as football and basketball players. Now the NCAA has voted to open up college hockey eligibility to CHL players effective Aug. 1, 2025, paving the way for major junior players to participate in the 2025-26 men’s college hockey season.
Which, we wrote in 2022, would leave hockey’s development model vulnerable. “As one insider told us, “The CHL model should be disrupted. Archaic and abusive.” NIL won’t kill the CHL but it could strip away a significant portion of its older stars who choose guaranteed money over long bus rides and billeting with other players. It’s early days, of course, but be prepared for an NHL No. 1 draft pick being a millionaire before his name is even called in the draft.”
As we wrote in May of 2022 “A Connor McDavid could sign an NIL styled contract at 16 years old, play in the NCAA and— rich already— still be drafted No. 1 overall. Yes, college hockey has a lower profile and fewer opportunities for endorsements. Some will want the CHL’s experience. But a McDavid-type player would be a prize catch for an equipment company or a video game manufacturer. Or even as an influencer. All things currently not allowed in the CHL.”
Effectively the CHL will get all or most of the top prospects at ages 16-19. After that age prospects drafted or undrafted can migrate to the NCAA model. Whether they can sign NHL contracts upon drafting and still play in the NCAA is unclear at this moment. (“On the positive side, we will get all the top young players coming to the CHL because we’re the best development option at that age,” one WHL general manager told The Athleltic’s Scott Wheeler.
One OHL GM told the Athletic “As the trend increases with American players looking for guarantees to sign, does a CHL player turn down an opportunity to sign at the end of their 19-year-old year with the hopes that a year at 20 in NCAA as a free agent gives them a better route to the NHL?”
The permutations are endless at the moment. But, at least, players and their families have a choice between hockey and education that was forbidden in the past. Plus, they can make money via NIL to allow them to stay for an extra year of development or education. The CHL will take a hit, but most young Canadian players will still see it as the logical launching pad to the NHL.
Now, for once, families can come first on the cold, nasty climb to the top hockey’s greasy pole.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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