Category: Redway

See Hemp Disconnected, A Psychological War for American Dependence Today at www.hotboxfilms.com

See Hemp Disconnected, A Psychological War for American Dependence Today at www.hotboxfilms.com

This Saturday July 23 at the Mateel in Redway

I’ll play my first SoHum gig in years this Saturday at The Mateel Community Center on Rusk Ln in Redway as part of Steve’s Big Rock Show. The show starts at 3pm. See you there!

Having Too Much Fun IRL

It’s been kind of a while since I’ve posted anything here. I guess I’ve just been having too much fun in real life to worry about what’s going on in VR. Also, most of my inspiration has been musical lately. Music is so much bigger than words, and any musical project demands much more energy than a simple essay. I’ve got a lot of musical projects in the works right now, so it’s a little overwhelming.

I’ve been brushing up my bass chops and learning a bunch of songs by Teri Smolens and Seabury Gould of The Control Group. We played out together for the first time last month at Siren’s Song, and we got a great response. We have another gig coming up Friday July 29th at the Mad River Brewery in Blue Lake. The Control Group plays topical songs that address current events. The show is called “The Pandemic Newsical” and includes songs like “Lockdown Blues,” “Walking Biohazard,” and “Fauci, He’s No Hero.” The Pandemic Newsical offers an entertaining, humorous, and educational take on the events that changed our lives so dramatically in the last couple of years.

Teri writes terrific songs in the tradition of classic Americana. She’s like the Tom Lehrer of Covid. Seabury Gould is a masterful multi-instrumentalist and it is a great pleasure to play with them. The music is so friendly, and these tunes so cleverly crafted and full of biting humor that it really feels great to be laying down basslines for them.

Of course I still play my didgeridoo, both as a solo artist, and with Sean Powers as the Hardin-Powers Act. Sean and I will play a SoHum gig on Saturday July 23rd at the Mateel Community Center in Redway. It’s the first time I’ve played in SoHum for many years, so I’m looking forward to playing for my neighbors.

Music has a power that transcends mere words, and live music in the real world has a magic that you will never find online. The online world is controlled, monitored and manipulated, but the real world is still free and life can still happen there, if you have the courage and make the effort to show up. I think live music matters now more than ever. If we are going to survive as a nation, as a culture, and as a community, it will only be because we got offline and started living in the real world again.

But Their Name is Already Mud

I wish I didn’t have to do this. I definitely have better things to do, but our local media outlets have turned against us, and somebody needs to call them on it. With a noted exception, “journalists” around here no longer consider it their job to provide us with the information we need to make informed decisions. Instead, they regurgitate focus-grouped propaganda, devoid of useful information, designed to induce compliance. I’m sure it’s easier than researching medical science, but don’t think we haven’t noticed. Journalists rarely cover science well, however, the utter failure of local media to even ask meaningful questions of our new overlords in the Public Health Department, demonstrates their complicity in this coup.

I include our local so-called “community” radio station among those traitors. I stopped volunteering at KMUD before the pandemic began, but recently, I got sucked back into KMUD’s orbit just long enough to see that things have gone from bad to much, much, worse. First, two people who live in SoHum told me that they were “banned” from KMUD for talking about Covid. They asked me to write letters on their behalf.

Second, as a result of those letters, I got invited to one of KMUD’s Program Selection and Review Committee meetings, which shocked me. At that meeting I learned that KMUD censors programmers and guests who questions vaccine safety, lockdown measures, or Covid treatment options. Many people in the community, including many volunteers, find this very disturbing.

Third, KMUD host Nikki Norris asked me to cover a few episodes of her show, my old show, Monday Morning Magazine. When I talked to staff at KMUD about this, they made it clear that I would not be allowed on the air unless my topics and guests were pre-approved by staff. I have never before been asked to submit a list of guests to staff for approval. That’s censorship. There is no other word for it. My topics and guests were disapproved so I did not host the shows.

Fourth, a group of local vax-free, mask-free folks gathered on the Garberville town square for a party with music and dancing. Kymkemp.com, to give credit where credit is due, sent a reporter, Lisa Music, who covered the event fairly, including a local couple’s story about how they beat Covid with Ivermectin, Vitamin C and zinc. That’s what local news reporters are supposed to do, and it seems like Kym Kemp’s operation is the only local news outlet that still remembers how. I applaud them for that. On the other hand, Lauren Schmidt of KMUD News attended the event, and recorded plenty of audio for a story, but it never materialized on KMUD’s Local News.

Finally, I sent this editorial to KMUD in response to a long, chilling, unattributed monologue delivered at the end of the local news (probably in place of the aforementioned story). The unattributed soliloquy it turns out, was extracted from the “Surgeon General’s Advisory on Building a Healthy Information Environment.” This ghastly piece of propaganda contains plenty of disinformation itself, but Stella Gherkin read it at the end of the local news without attributing it to anyone. I found it shocking. In response, I submitted this editorial to the station’s community editorial feature, called “All Sides Now.”

“Hello, This is John Hardin for ‘All Sides Now.’

KMUD’s Wednesday Dec 8 Local News sounded like something you might hear in North Korea. Stella Gherkin’s long, unattributed, vaguely threatening monologue at the end of the broadcast chilled me to the bone. Whatever that was, it was not news, and therefore had no place in our local newscast.

I want to remind everyone that free speech, as guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution, has always produced the healthiest information environment, and that is especially true in the fields of science and medicine. The free flow of information, shielded from government censorship by the First Amendment, made the United states a leader in science, technology, and medicine.

Moreover, KMUD is built on, by, and for this community’s commitment to free speech and the idea that we make better decisions when we hear all sides of the story. KMUD exists to insure that we as members of this community have a voice in the debates that drive policy in this community and beyond.

When we stand accused of a crime in this country, we are judged by a jury of our peers, not a panel of experts, the WHO, or Pope Fauci, but by a jury of our peers. that’s because this country is built on the understanding that “We The People” have the capacity, and the responsibility to parse the evidence and determine the facts for ourselves, in every case, regardless of the complexity of the issue or the magnitude of the consequences, and the Covid Pandemic is no exception.

History teaches that regimes censor information, not to protect citizens from misleading falsehoods, but to cover-up their own crimes against humanity. I suspect that is what is happening now, and KMUD should have no part in it.”

KMUD refused to air this editorial. When I uploaded the audio of this “All Sides Now” to Spotify, and shared it on Facebook, someone on KMUD staff called it “libel.”

I have learned, in my many years of volunteering at KMUD, that the most reliable thing about KMUD is “The Unbelievables.” “The Unbelievables” are a phenomena that happens, on-air or off, when someone connected to KMUD says or does something so wrong, so totally inappropriate, completely off-base, and breathtakingly insensitive, that you just can’t believe it really happened. In this case, the idea that KMUD, a listener-supported community radio station, refused to air an editorial in support of free speech, and threatened legal action in response to it being shared elsewhere, is the kind of “Unbelievable” that is not just embarrassing, stupid and sad, but that deeply undermines the credibility and the integrity of our community radio station. I wish it weren’t true, and that someone besides me would say it, but that’s the truth, and you deserve to know.

Covid and the Culture of Maximum Harm

As Southern Humboldt’s most intrepid writer, I understand that this does not constitute a high honor. Here in Humboldt County, where “positivity” trumps reality, and we spend more time cultivating flattering lies about ourselves than looking at the truth. We’ve become exceptionally good at ignoring things like dead bodies, huge ripoffs, and widespread environmental destruction as “business as usual.” But, when a brand new elephant shows up and makes itself comfortable on our sofa, and no one else seems to see it, I recognize my responsibility to my community. I mostly stopped writing about life in SoHum a couple of years ago to focus on music. I have a lot more to say beyond words than I do with words these days, but times like these demand more from us, and clearly, SoHum needs my perspective now more than ever.

In case you haven’t noticed, maybe because you were too busy compulsively washing your hands, that our constitutional democracy got overthrown by a public health dictatorship. Two years into this fiasco, the US has logged more Covid deaths, both in total, and per capita, than any other developed nation on Earth. Clearly, what we did in response to Covid, was wrong. Way wrong. Wronger than any other first-world nation on Earth. Why was that?

Besides that, the average American life expectancy dropped by 1.9 years during the pandemic, not because of Covid, most Covid deaths were among people who had already exceeded the average life expectancy. No, American life expectancy dropped because addiction, overdose, depression, alcoholism, suicide, anxiety, hunger, despair, unemployment, loneliness, isolation and fear all soared during the pandemic, greatly exacerbated by the draconian restrictions instituted in response to the pandemic. Those restrictions, and the social and economic consequences of them, killed millions of healthy Americans in the prime of their lives. We could hardly have done more damage to Americans’ health if we tried.

Again, why is that? Were these policies designed to harm us? I think that’s a fair question to ask, considering how successfully they disrupted our lives, ruined our businesses, overthrew our democracy and rescinded our civil rights, as opposed to how poorly their strategy worked to prevent deaths from Covid.

Here in Humboldt County we lost twice as many people to overdose in 2020 as we did to Covid, and I’ll bet that’s true in 2021 as well, but they don’t report about that epidemic anymore. Somehow they deem it appropriate to spare us that grim body count. Nor do we hear about the suicides, heart attacks, liver disease, etc. Unless you die of Covid, you don’t count. Our local media continues to ignore the damage wrought by draconian lockdown restrictions, but anyone who dares criticize these measures gets vilified mercilessly. What’s up with that?

During the War on Drugs, we used the term “Culture of Maximum Harm” to describe the perverse way in which efforts to curb drug abuse, by criminalizing drug users, caused far more harm than drug abuse itself. In fact, the War on Drugs strategy of arresting and incarcerating drug users and peddlers seems to have been devised so as to cause the maximum possible harm to society. When we saw how the culture of maximum harm used the pretense of addressing a public health crisis as cover for violence, human rights violations and political oppression, we saw the War on Drugs, not as an effort to curb drug use, but as a tool to invade privacy, incarcerate millions, and as a distraction from, and excuse for, crimes against humanity.

We see the same culture of maximum harm at work today in the Covid Pandemic, and the same idiotic enthusiasm for strategies with a proven track record of failure. Masking causes more infections than it prevents. Social isolation kills more Americans than Covid, and don’t even get me started on vaccines and vaccine injuries. If you took the ripoff death-jab, I’m sorry. I really am, but Covid vaccines don’t work, and besides that, they kill people. That’s just the truth.

Ten years and 666+ posts later, SoHum still needs someone who isn’t afraid to confront the obvious, no matter how unpopular or inconvenient, and the obvious has never been more unpopular or inconvenient than it is right now. I wish it weren’t so, and that I didn’t have to do it, but no one else around here will. Like it or not, you need me right now, because there’s something you need to know, and it’s staring you in the face, but for some reason you just don’t see it yet. So welcome back.

3 Things You Need to Know About Science

I love science and have tremendous respect for scientific inquiry. I have studied science. I know a few scientists, and I generally like them. However, I know a few things about science, and scientists, that more people need to know, especially now. So today, I offer you a few really important things you need to know about science and scientists.

1. Scientists know almost everything about physics, and almost nothing about life. That’s why physicists can build a reliable nuclear weapon but doctors can’t cure the common cold. Objective science works well for calculating the trajectories and velocities of objects in space and time. Organisms, however, are not objects, and so objective science is completely inadequate for studying them.

Most scientists don’t know this, but it is true. Sadly, many scientists, especially in the US continue to study human beings as though we were objects, or piles of objects called atoms. This has led to a medical system that dehumanizes and objectifies us more effectively than it treats disease or promotes health. It also means that there’s a hell of a lot that doctors don’t know. One thing doctors do know, however, is how to talk down to you in such a way that you won’t question their bullshit.

Physicists know how to blow shit up, and they don’t argue about it. Physicians, on the other hand, barely know what they are looking at, and there’s a lot of disagreement among them about practically everything. Doctors don’t like to let on that they really don’t know what they are doing, so they formed the American Medical Association in order to put up a consistent front that makes it look like they have everything figured out and know what to do in every situation. They do this so that people will trust them, and unfortunately, it works entirely too well. The AMA works very hard to quell dissent within its ranks, and banishes doctors who refuse to tow the party line, but renegade doctors persist, and many of them have better success treating patients than doctors who follow AMA guidelines.

2. Almost everything we know about science, we learned from the pursuit of war. We learned physics in the development of ever more lethal weapons, and we learned medicine from patching up the survivors. Today our weapons kill people far more effectively than our doctors cure disease, and much of the advance in modern medicine has been in improving survival rates of people who suffer the kinds of traumatic injury that only technology can inflict.

3. Plebes worship “Science,” while scientists worship money. You can’t do science without money, and finding money to do science isn’t easy. Unless somebody thinks they can make a lot of money on it, or the military thinks they can kill people with it, you are probably going to have a hard time finding money to study it. On the other hand, if you don’t really care what you work on, as long as it pays well, your opportunities as a scientist multiply. Scientists spend a lot on their education, and they expect to be rewarded for that, so many scientists look for the higher paying jobs.

That’s why, when you need a scientist to do something really terrible, like design a nuclear weapon that kills all of the people in a city, but leaves the buildings standing, or turn a minor statistical anomaly into a smoke-screen argument against global warming, or bio-engineer a bat corona-virus so that it infects humans, you can always find a meek and obedient scientist who is happy to do it for you so long as you have the money.

Plebes, on the other hand, have disavowed the creation myth of their Judaeo-Christian heritage in favor of an even bigger pile of bullshit called the Big Bang Theory, and they now embrace “Science” the great spirit from whom all new technology flows, as a religion. They traded the clerical collar for the white lab-coat of scientific authority. Now they believe anything the doctor tells them, just like they used to believe the priest, and of course they take their vaccines as a sacrament to their faith in “Science.” I hope they’ve at least learned not to leave their kids alone with a scientist either.

People have always believed a lot of stupid stuff. As I’ve so eloquently said before, “Stupid and wrong is the natural human condition, and it has never stopped us before.” That said, the human body is smarter than science can comprehend, and its natural tendency to heal, especially when supported by good nutrition, proper exercise and a non-toxic environment, tends to make doctors look good, if they can somehow take credit for it, but the miracle is you, not the medicine, and your body knows more than your doctor.

That’s why you should be very careful about messing with that miracle, or trusting “Science.” Science is not some noble pursuit of the truth. Science is about warfare, money, power and greed, and any scraps of truth that emerge from it are purely coincidental. Science is a tool of exploitation and control. In fact, psychologists are studying you right now, and the people paying those psychologists intend to use the knowledge they gain to control and exploit you. That’s what you need to know about science.