DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE: The fine art of censorship, banning and whatnot!

I am going to cover a few items here this week so listen up – the topic “banning” and maybe we can throw “censorship” in too, just for good measure.

As an aside, I am going to throw out another amazing idea – how about banning lies.

Okay, so my Fox News friends are not going to like me very much on this first bit. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I outlined who owns most of the media? Well, that goes for who owns both Fox News and CNN, etc., etc., etc., – the pyramid at the top is ridiculously small.

Let’s talk about banning and what that really means, because Amazon was recently taken to task by Fox’s Tucker Carlson – and the report was a bit misleading.

Carlson said Amazon had banned a few books. For example, he named a book by Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin.

Carlson had my interest on this because I am a total book nerd.

So, it was reported that if you go to Amazon.com – a virtual bookstore – and you look for Dugin’s books it will not come up. So, I went to Amazon to find out if this was true – and Dugin’s books did come up.

This is my way of reminding readers, do your own research.

Carlson said he reached out to Amazon, and they replied, “Amazon complies with all applicable laws.”

He went on to note in the good ‘ol US of A we have a First Amendment and there are no laws against publishing books. True.

He also noted the government is not allowed to censor books. 

Also, true.

He reported the Treasury Department designated this book as having “disinformation.”

Huh?

Want I really want to say here is who has the right to make a book seller offer any book they do not want to sale.

Yes, Amazon is a huge bookseller (they even carry my books), but since we are still living in what is still called a democracy, you cannot make Amazon sell any book they don’t want to – agreed.

Because if that is the case, then are you going to have to make a Christian bookstore sell the Satanic Bible – probably not.

Are you going to make an esoteric bookstore sale the Christian Bible?

I am not sure where the First Amendment comes in to all this because while Carlson said the Treasury Department had a hand in this banning other than the fact it replied to Carlson, “We don’t comment on possible enforcement matters, but the Treasury Department continues to vigorously enforce Russia-related sanctions,” I am not sure where his summation applies to “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”

How can one prove that Amazon just does not want to carry this book?

Because in that case is it banning when a Christian bookstore decides not to carry the latest “Love Signs Compatibility for the Zodiac,” get it?

One Senior Software Engineer at Amazon commented, “Not being a government agency, Amazon neither “censors” nor “bans” books. Amazon does refuse to sell certain books or have them sold by others on its site. In that it is no different from the vast majority of book sellers.”

Just a thought – may not mean a thing – but did it ever occur to you that if the same people are pulling all the strings at the top (refer to my column several weeks ago) then they just might be pulling the strings on both sides and just directing the narrative of those strings, depending on the political agenda each person believes to be true.

And then getting people on both sides of the aisle all riled up as a distraction to what we really need to see.

As for books, you can come to my apartment, and we can have a book party anytime. I have about 2000 books shoved everywhere in my apartment on the brink of toppling.

I even have eight of the 13 books listed on one book ban list I recently saw – including “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Diary of Anne Frank”, and I will leave this topic right there.

Next, how about arguing to ban scientists allowed to create new laboratory strains of COVID-19.

Like we need another strain – my head just swiveled all the way around when I read that.

And yes, this really happened last week. I guess those scientists were apparently so darn proud of themselves as noted by The Economic Times with the headline, “Boston University claims to have produced new COVID strain with 80 percent kill rate.”

Reportedly the new strain of COVID-19 is a hybrid variety with a mix of the Wuhan and Omicron made right here in America – we didn’t even have to involve China in this one.

So, if we can do it here, why couldn’t the original strain have come from a lab too (for those people who still believe COVID-19 wasn’t created in a lab).

This most recent test was conducted on mice. Scientists apparently argued, “Research on potential pandemic pathogens needs to be increased and secured to avoid future problems.”

Of course, the other side argued this entire experiment was taken out of context. I wonder if that could be because it was noted in a separate article the “study caught off guard the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helps fund BU research.”

Oops, the emperor has lost his clothes again because guess who is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director?

If you guessed Anthony Fauci, you would be correct. Yep, that same man who it has been rumored thought it was okay to greenlight federally funded experiments on dogs including cutting their vocal cords out, infesting the beagle dogs with ticks, and placing dogs in cages with infectious sandflies.

I researched to see if I could find anything on this to remove our “good” doctor from the scene of the crime.

PolitiFact, part of The Poynter Institute reported “A conservative watchdog group claimed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded a variety of research studies that involved cruel treatment of beagles.”

NIAID denied funding “one of the studies, just the one where the dog’s heads were in mesh cages full of sand flies therefore eaten alive. They did admit to other funded studies in which the beagles were eventually euthanized, and their vocal cords cut out.

I tried to find out the particulars on The Poynter Institute and found they are owned by the Tampa Bay Times (Times Publishing Company) and the International Fact-Checking Network, who also owns PolitiFact. I researched who owns Times Publishing Company – that would be Poynter Institute. Who owns Poynter Institute? That would be Time Publishing – let’s get out of this rabbit hole.

So, what else is owned by these companies who own each other – well, the International Fact-Checking Network is a business unit of the Poynter Institute.

Is anyone factchecking the factcheckers? Just curious!

If we do want to start banning, let’s make some sense of it – or is there any sense to banning at all? Isn’t that just the first step to a totalitarian society where a certain number of elites (who aren’t usually as smart as they think they are) decide what everyone else should be thinking and breathing and smelling and eating and driving and… you get the point.

When is the cost of freedom going to be worth the fight?

SIDE NOTE: I know I was going to write about Adult Death Syndrome this week and the stories of what embalmers are finding in the deceased who have been vaccinated.

I promised the readers when I began writing this column I would research both sides, get the facts, and report the news with no prejudice on either side.

I’m finding there is much information that is not true on both sides of the argument regarding ADS and the embalmer’s reports, and I am continuing to look for answers from several different angles.

I am very much looking forward to finding the underlying cause of this one.