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Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

The Sound of Freedom: An Important Movie

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Elke and I made a somewhat belated run up to Moore yesterday to watch Angel Studios’* important film, The Sound of Freedom, directed and co-written by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Monteverde. We strongly recommend it.

Sound of Freedom poster
Sound of Freedom poster

The film is compelling and mostly well-acted, taking us from Tegucigalpa to Calexico, Cartagena, Bogota, and rebel-held strongholds of the southern Colombian mountains, following a suspenseful journey to rescue a large group of sex-trafficked kids. This includes two separated Honduran siblings in particular, the little brother saved while being smuggled across the border from Mexicali. With him, the lead character becomes especially bonded, and promises and becomes determined to find and save the sister at all costs, at great risk to his own life. The overall feel was part Miami Vice, part (insert your favorite hostage-rescue thriller here).

As such movies go, just on script and flow alone, The Sound of Freedom is only a little above average. But because the subject matter is so serious, compelling and important, and based on real events, its overtly stated goal of raising awareness is solidly justified. Crime statistics don’t come close to representing the scale of the problem either, because so much of it is unreported, underground, and extraterritorial to U.S. enforcement efforts. Some unknown amount also has remained hidden right under our noses, both in the streets and in illegal loci for wealthy “customers” (think Epstein Island).

The Sound of Freedom is based on the real-life story of an ICE child-trafficking investigator, Tim Ballard, portrayed by Jim Caviezel, whose investigations were cut off by the bureaucracy due to perceived poor cost/benefit ratio, just as he was about to drill deep enough into a child-trafficking ring to blow it up. Unwilling to let the older sister of the siblings continue to be a slave for a pedophilic drug lord, Tim resigned from ICE, then teamed up with a reformed drug kingpin and Colombian law enforcement to carry out the mission anyway.

Other than the ugly but decidedly real-world topic (and some violence) possibly being too intense for preteen children, I don’t see what possibly could be controversial about this movie, or the fundamental premise it makes of ending child trafficking and enslavement. It’s hard to balance realistic portrayal of this hideous problem with “showing too much” or being gratuitous, but I think they pulled it off well. The struggle to stop pedophilia and prostitution of children should be a universally agreed noble cause across the entire political spectrum — except to the sickos doing it and those covering for and enabling them.

The film is conspicuously apolitical: no mention of any political party or politicians by name whatsoever, and just a generic mention (in a positive way) of Congress in the end statements, using footage from the real Tim Ballard’s testimony to get more international cooperation on fighting the evil scourge of child trafficking.

* The movie is five years old but only came out this month. Despite being finished in 2018, the movie’s distribution deal was somehow passed off from 20th Century Fox to Disney, who shelved it (why?), until the filmmakers bought the rights back. They ultimately went with Angel Studios, producers of the multiseason Jesus and Disciples series, The Chosen. Only after Angel could crowdsource enough money to market and distribute the film, was it released. It’s strange that a film that has done so well had to follow such a convoluted path to theaters.

Ethics in Science: Fauci Must Go

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As a scientist who publishes peer-reviewed research, I strongly support and favor scientific work, the scientific method with reproducibility and falsifiability, and science as problem-solver for human civilization. However, I’m not one of those who raises science to the level of a false god, to be served at all costs, morals and ethics be damned. I also cringe and anger when government gets unethical with science in any way, because that unfairly smears me by association.

Science should help to solve our problems, not cause them, nor make them worse! This is why I oppose such “scientific” endeavors as human experiments that are involuntary, unknowing, misrepresented, or deliberately physically or psychologically damaging (say, Tuskegee syphilis experiments by the United States Public Health Service, Wendell Johnson stuttering-orphan “experiments”, anything involving eugenics, “Little Albert” infant-fear test, 1955 CIA whooping-cough release near Tampa, human radioactivity experiments at the Universities of Rochester and Cincinnati, CIA’s MKULTRA subproject 68, 1950s/60s covered-up toxic, radioactive chemical releases in St. Louis, and many more).

[Have you ever noticed how many of these inhumane “experiments” have been performed or funded by government? Do you still wonder why so many people don’t trust government science? I have to deal with that blowback even in weather science, where harmful ethical problems have been extremely rare.]

Animal testing is a gray area for me, context-dependent, case-by-case. I’m not some PETA extremist who worships worms, roaches and rats. I gladly eat meat and lots of it. I don’t have a problem with most animal experimentation involving mice, insects, fish, etc. However, some are clearly and obviously cruel to anyone with even the most minuscule conscience. Pretty much anything that causes harm to animals that are common human pets definitely crosses my line.

Enter Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health. Some background…

On Fauci’s watch: Chinese gain-of-function experiments on viral bat coronaviruses were backdoor-funded via third party with taxpayer money, after it was banned in the U.S. (for good reason). This provided plausible deniability on direct funding of any sort of corona gain-of-function work in Wuhan, a semantics game Fauci cunningly and misleadingly played in testimony. Four days ago, in a latter to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, DHS admitted to very limited coronavirus GoF money laundering through a third party (EcoHealth Allaince Inc) to Wuhan Institute. Your tax money, folks! I’m highly skeptical this was limited to viruses unrelated to the one now causing so much human devastation, and am confident more will trickle out over many years, until all this smoke reveals the ultimate fire.

This full stream of Glenn Greenwald’s tweets summarizes this NIH/EcoHealth/gain-of-function insanity succinctly. Greenwald is hardly a Q-anon right winger. In fact he quotes a story from Vanity Fair, of all things, that damns Fauci badly. [Vanity Fair? Also hardly a right-wing rag — in fact, quite the opposite! Yes, it’s fair to ask why that outfit investigated this, instead of supposed journalistic titans turned woke-cult mouthpieces like NY Times or Washington Post.] I agree with Greenwald that Rand Paul is owed an apology he’ll never receive, from Fauci and NIH.

Greenwald ignores Red Commie China too much in his statements — they obviously know everything about everything happening in that country through their deep, pervasive, Orwellian surveillance state — most certainly at the Wuhan lab, and all of EcoHealth’s involvement. They knew all too well about how the pandemic began (and aren’t telling nor permitting full outside investigation) — then incompetently responded to the disease emergence, leading to its worldwide spread. Not to mention cooking their own books with low fatalities and case numbers. The CCP is very much culpable here *also*, even as Greenwald hyperfocuses on encouragement and financial support via the U.S. bureaucracy, NIH. So, back to NIH and Fauci…

Bottom line: Fauci either didn’t know about the EcoHealth GoF work, and should have (malfeasance, incompetent leadership), or did know (per the 2018 grant report Greenwald notes) and is lying. Either way, he needs to go. But wait, there’s more!

Do you like beagle puppies? Stop now if you wish not to know of recent “experiments” on them that you and I unknowingly funded, that if any of us did in our own homes, rightfully would land us in jail and labeled as psychopaths. I hate stories like this, and almost never share them. However, this is a rare exception, because you are paying for this every week out of your salary, and should at least have the option to know about it. NIH funded the needless medical torture of beagle puppies.

From another bipartisan House report: “NIAID spent $1.68 million in taxpayer funds on drug tests involving 44 beagle puppies. The dogs were all between six and eight months old. The commissioned tests involved injecting and force-feeding the puppies an experimental drug for several weeks, before killing and dissecting them. Of particular concern is the fact that the invoice to NIAID included a line item for ‘cordectomy.’ As you are likely aware, a cordectomy, also known as ‘devocalization,’ involves slitting a dog’s vocal cords in order to prevent them from barking, howling, or crying. This cruel procedure — which is opposed with rare exceptions by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Animal Hospital Association, and others – seems to have been performed so that experimenters would not have to listen to the pained cries of the beagle puppies. This is a reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds.”

NIAID is a unit of the NIH, directed by Fauci. This cruelty in the name of science was done on his watch. He is responsible.

I find it ironic, and somewhat pathetic, that Fauci is likely to face far more heat for this than for other ways he has misled (covered up) and/or outright lied. If truly “the buck stops here”, his removal from NIH is long past due.

Governmental Dependency as a Toxic Relationship

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When it comes to logistics and preparedness, the mode of thinking needs to be logic and reason — not emotion. Pretend you’re an interstellar alien, we’ll call him Spock (or her Spockette, if you want to be equal opportunity), evaluating our relationship with central Federal bureaucracy from outer space.

Two pertinent points: First, when an entity has failed, over and over and over, to accomplish goals timely and accurately, is it logical to keep depending upon it, or to demand from it what it has repeatedly foot-dragged and failed to deliver? Spock(ette) says: No. Highly illogical.

What is that entity? Distant, detached, massive, red-tape-ridden, impersonal, faceless Federal bureaucracy. I’m speaking of the whole entity, as a large, bloated mass, not individual right-minded people inside it who are trying to improve things, mostly in futility.

Epidemiologists have been warning of a pandemic like the one ongoing, for over a quarter of a century. Yet through multiple D and R presidencies, multiple D, R and split Congresses, this is the result. Blaming only the current people (while they deserve just the latest few years’ share of it) is purely partisan, shortsighted, ignorant of history, and emotional — not logical, not reasoned.

This scenario has been warned about for DECADES, with only token, window-dressing action. Such longstanding foot-dragging in preparation for what has been an inevitable pandemic is just one example of such lack of foresight and attention to low-probability (in any one year), high-impact events that will happen some year. This is such a year.

Those who expertly predicted it for the last few decades have every right to say, “I told you so, why didn’t you listen to me and prepare?” And they are entirely reasoned and logical in asking such a question. Spock(ette) would approve.

This is why foreseers and visionaries get disillusioned: government bureaucracy — too debt-ridden and bloated from generations of exceeding its literal Constitutional authority in many areas — is too focused on the here and now and the pork-barrel pandering that doesn’t lend itself to accommodating accurate expert farsightedness. This is objectively demonstrable in the lack of preparedness in numerous crises — not just this coronavirus. And when it comes to logic and reason, objective evaluation is what matters.

Is it logical to expect quick deployments and resolutions when, as only a mild exaggeration, it takes 37 layers of approvals and nine months to unlock a door latch? Spock(ette) says: no. Highly illogical. We see it over, and over, and over, from slow hurricane response, to days/weeks wait for Federal deployment on wildfires, to the CDC bungling of this virus disaster, to weekly politicization of nonpartisan issues.

Yet I see so many people demanding more involvement of the very same thing that keeps failing, over and over and over: Federal “help”! That’s not only illogical, but irrational, unhealthy, toxic! And also: Sisyphean.

Second: Disasters really are local. This is because individuals are affected.

States (especially for their resource/economically poor rural areas) and major cities need to learn to prepare as if they essentially will get zero help from above in a timely way. Quite often, after all, that’s the brutally honest truth. This way, if help does arrive, it’s a bonus, a relief.

Dependency on big, inefficient, untimely, unreliable Washington is really a form of unhealthy codependency — akin to a neglectful, often gaslighting, sometimes abusive personal relationship, but wrought on a broad scale.

Think about this, please. Relate to it. Would you tell your friend in such a relationship to stay the course, stick it out, trust the abuser/neglector will somehow, someday reform? If you have been in such a relationship personally, you will get what I’m saying. Why encourage such relationships of cities, counties and states with Washington, who has and will let them down, gaslight, neglect, attach strings, token-“help”, or even trample them as often as fully assist?

Abusive relationships don’t just arise from individuals, but also…see encircled. The question isn’t which of these federal government has done at some point or another, but which it hasn’t! It’s not hard to find historic examples of every pie piece above.

If you still don’t understand the concept of betrayal by centralized DC bureaucracy, and how systemically destructive that can be, ask our native American Indian tribes.

Exactly as we correctly advise friends in toxic relationships, states and cities need to learn to get out of that bad relationship with Washington and go it on their own, with years to decades of advanced planning for every sort of disaster that could befall them. Spock(ette) would see this through the lens of history and say, “That’s imminently logical.”