[This piece was submitted to the Leader and rejected by them. Writer Brett Nunn explains, “I first offered it to the Leader hoping to reach a certain audience and start a civil conversation. The editor wrote back “it’s not experimental and it’s FDA approved.”]
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Yes, I gathered with a crowd of my fellow Jefferson County citizens at the traffic light in front of Safeway on Sims Way in Port Townsend on Saturday, August 20th. We were a mix of health care providers at risk of losing their licenses, grass roots activists, and just regular people. We were there to oppose the governor’s vaccine mandates for health care workers and teachers; something all of us agreed was an egregious overreach of his powers.
We had plenty of people giving us the thumbs up, and plenty of people flipping us the bird, or yelling obscenities out their car windows.
I have mentioned before that when I moved to this town a couple decades ago to raise a family it was a tolerant place filled with interesting, creative and intelligent people from all backgrounds with many varied beliefs. Somehow it all worked. We didn’t always get along, but I would like to think we respected each enough to practice a live-and-let-live philosophy that really made life here dynamic, invigorating and relaxed.
Not so much anymore.
So in the spirit of the peaceful past I extend an olive branch along with a request for my fellow citizens, whom I know to be kind, well educated, and supposedly tolerant, yet drive by in their Tesla’s and Prius’s flashing rude hand signs while saying, “&*$% you, you’re an idiot.”
I need more.
You say I am an idiot. It’s hard for me not to feel the same towards you.
Where does that leave us?
Give me more.
Am I an idiot because I want health care workers in Jefferson County to have the freedom to choose what medical treatments they want, rather than have Governor Inslee order them to take a shot or lose their license?
Am I an idiot for taking an afternoon away from my family to stand on a corner with a sign because I want you and your children to have the same freedom to choose or refuse whatever medical treatment might be required by government in the future?
Or am I an idiot because denigrating someone who has a belief different than yours is far easier than striving to understand?
I understand the fear of the last year and a half.
I understand the peer pressure.
I understand it is just easier to “go along to get along” because we were told if we got the shot everything would go back to normal.
I understand all this.
What I don’t understand is why I should “&%$@ off” when our politicians and media are pushing experimental medical treatments for the whole population that we all should know by now were not approved by the FDA, the makers of which have no liability for short term side effects that are real (seizures, heart damage, paralysis) or long term side effects (which remain mostly unknown), that doesn’t keep you from being re-infected or passing it on to others, for which it seems a third booster is needed after only six months, all for a disease that has a 99%+ survival rate for the majority of the population?
That is what I know.
Please tell me what you know, that makes what I know, something I should “%$#@ off” about?
In the mean time I urge everyone to de-escalate. Wherever you are, strive to be an island of calm, no matter what the media is saying.
If the last eighteen months has taught us anything, we can’t rely on government, either state or federal, to be of much help here in Jefferson County. Each of us, as individuals, have to do our part to knit this community back together, keep it strong, sustainable, and self reliant into the future. We can’t do this while we yell “idiot” at each other.
Now tell me what you know.
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Have you been censored?
Has a letter you’ve written been censored by the Leader, Peninsula Daily News, or other local media? The Port Townsend Free Press will publish all censored letters to the editor that meet our guidelines for civil discourse*.
For nearly a year, the Leader, the Peninsula Daily News and other local media outlets have been censoring all voices challenging the official Covid narrative (see my February article “Of Covid Testing, ‘Misinformation’ and Censorship”).
Then, on August 24, 2021 the Leader went a step further. Our local newspaper not only shut out civil, open discussion, it promoted demonization of and outright discrimination against the county residents it has been censoring:
“These dolts should be considered pariahs because of ignorance and intransigence. They should not work in offices or schools, should not be allowed in public places without proof of vaccination… Why is it taking so long to completely shut these knuckle-draggers out of civilized society?”
“Thanks, Spreadnecks, for our COVID miseries”—an admitted “rant” from columnist Bill Mann—was riddled with name-calling and inflammatory hate speech. With no science to support what is now a political narrative to demonize the healthy unvaccinated (see Stephen Schumacher’s letter below), Mann declared the “anti-vaxxers” in our community the enemy, a scourge responsible for the “miseries” that have befallen the good and righteous vaccinated.
In response, at least six people sent letters to the editor (LTEs) that we are aware of. They are printed below. None of their letters appeared in the September 1st edition of the Leader. However a concerned letter from Stacey McCarthy was published.
“This kind of talk is what incites violence…
You have an opportunity to create a space for meaningful
dialogue at a time when it is desperately needed.
Instead you choose name calling…”
Rather than embrace that opportunity for meaningful dialogue, the name-calling continued. The following week the Leader again chose to withhold all six letters below. Instead five letters were published on September 8th cheerleading Mann’s vile diatribe and calling for everyone to get the shots.
A health professional whose letter was not printed called the paper to inquire about being censored. Publisher Donna Etchey assured him that the Leader prints all the LTEs they receive, a patent lie. His and the other letters continued to be withheld from publication in the weeks that followed. In their place, the paper ran more “just get the vax” letters.
“Bill Mann is to be commended” began one of the opening salvos, calling those who refuse the injection “a real threat to society,” like “say,mass shooters.” Another writer provoked, “The time has come to make some hard decisions about what to do with these people.”
Is the newspaper’s management proud to be egging on this vigilante mentality?
The Leader couldn’t be a more blatant propaganda rag for pharma’s narrative that we must have never-ending shots in every arm on the planet or we’ll never be safe. Get your injection is the message in every opinion piece, every cartoon, every news story, every letter about Covid it publishes. The unvaxxed are “endangering the lives of others” say these misinformed writers. No matter that even the CDC says the vaccinated spread Covid as much or more than the unvaxxed. Or that the estimated 80-100 million Covid-recovered Americans who are unvaccinated have far more robust and durable protection against future infection than the vaxxed.
When history is written, it will likely be these Covid-recovered unvaxxed who are the true heroes in this saga. In the face of this leaky vaccine, those who developed natural immunity after contracting the virus may be our only hope for ever achieving herd immunity. But forget balanced journalism; the Leader will not allow these truths to see print, bent only on pressuring, cajoling and coercing more people to get injected with a dangerous, failed experimental product wreaking havoc around the world.
Freedom of speech is a thing of the past in Jefferson County. In a month of newspapers since Mann’s incendiary diatribe was printed, except for the initial token letter calling for meaningful dialogue in our community, not a single letter has been published that represents the 50% of Americans who see through this divisive fear narrative based on lies.
Who are these despicable “spreadnecks” – the “boneheads” that Mann and others would like to see purged from (im)polite society? According to researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the highest proportion of “vaccine hesitant”—23.9%—hold PhDs. Nearly 74% of those refusing have at least some college education.
Other surveys have found that among top refuseniks are our medical personnel and first responders witnessing vaccine injuries and deaths first-hand which are being denied and covered up. They include:
Frontline nurses across the US and Canada, watching high numbers of fully vaccinated patients being treated for Covid and vax injuries, while their hospitals falsify that data. (7 minutes)
A UK funeral director who has seen far more deaths from vaccination than from the virus, with deaths from other causes falsely labeled Covid deaths, and deaths following vaccination attributed to anything but the shots. (38 minutes)
A New York Hospitalist Physician’s Assistant leaving her long-time career after filing more than 120 VAERS reports for Covid vaccine injuries and deaths, then ordered by her superiors to back off from making those reports… and now forced to choose between jab or job. (65 minutes)
Deborah Conrad, PA-C, MSHS, BSMT – Hospitalist Physician’s Assistant, Member of Medical Committee Advanced Practice Provider Director
Asked “Are you going to get this vaccine?”
“Absolutely not. I’m terrified. I am more afraid of this vaccine than I am of Covid. I love my job, I want my job. But I’m scared, scared because of what I’ve seen… I’ll give up my career, and many will—I’ve got many on my side who are walking away from careers that they love because they’re so scared.”
These are perspectives you will not hear from the tightly-controlled medical-industrial complex and complicit media. These health care workers are the “dolts” Mann and his ilk would have you treat as pariahs. As are the police, firefighters, and other first responders throughout North America making a stand to say no to vaccine mandates:
State troopers, correctional officers, city firefighters and other public employees in Washington state who have filed a lawsuit to overturn Inslee’s directive;
Police and firefighters in Los Angeles who have formed a resistance group against Covid vaccine mandates, with Fire Department Captain Cristian Granucci, a 31 year veteran, ready to lose his job rather than comply: “I’m done being silent.” (12 minutes)
A firefighters union almost 500 strong, both vaxxed and unvaxxed, taking the city of Newark, NJ to court over vaccine mandates, joined by police and other trade unions in challenging that city (first 16 minutes);
Toronto, Ontario police, firefighters and paramedics in this silent, powerful protest against mandatory vaccinations (1 minute).
In the face of rising resistance, the powers-that-be grow ever-more desperate to push the shots. What better way than to falsely portray those resisting as a threat, dangerous to society? As history has shown, a population gripped by fear is easily convinced to target a disenfranchised subgroup as the enemy. It diverts the focus away from power-hungry controllers pulling levers and turning dials behind the curtain.
Like most of the national media, local newspapers are simply bully pulpits for official propaganda. The Leader joins an agenda to vilify a segment of our population and instigate a segregated, two-tiered society—tearing apart community and country. To that end, it runs hit pieces that make a mockery of civil journalistic standards, while barring thoughtful opposing discourse from the public square.
Here are six of the letters the Leader would not print. You may not agree with their perspectives. Do you agree that it serves our community to censor their voices?
Editor, the Leader:
Considering history, there are many examples of atrocities, both long ago and recent, in other countries and our own, where a minority group in the community was demonized, called unclean, dangerous and disease-spreading. We look back on those moments in history with horror.
I don’t know if you can SEE it, but right now, we are demonizing a minority group in our community, calling them dirty, disease-spreading, “spreadnecks,” instituting segregation, firing them from their jobs, closing their businesses, destroying their lives. Can we see where this is heading? Do we continue on this path towards mob violence and segregation, or is this a community that believes in diversity, inclusion, tolerance and peace?
May we help turn the tide towards a more beautiful world!
Barclay Calvert, L.Ac.
Port Townsend
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In response to Mann Overboard.
Surely this unbalanced and hateful perspective can only be shared by very few folks in this town. I pray that this is the case. But moreso, I am simply amazed that the Leader would choose such a vile and immature piece to showcase. The only intent that I can think of to exhibit this column from Mann is to foment division and hatred. This does not in any way suggest journalistic integrity, but instead continues with a nefarious agenda that is promulgated through lies and deception and character assassination of anybody with a dissenting opinion. Anybody telling the truth.
In agreeing with this type of juvenile rhetoric you are choosing to continue with a false reality of fake PCR tests and censorship of treatments in order to coerce an experimental, toxic, gene altering concoction on the masses. Jabs that are aptly named “clot shots”.
If you are vaccinated then why should you be fearful of those who have done their research and have reached a different conclusion than you? Do you not see? This is straight out of the Nazi playbook, but instead now, we unvaxxed are the “unwashed” Jews. What will it be next? The 3 jab folks disparaging the 2 jabbers?
The people that I know who Mr. Mann has termed the “knuckle draggers” are the thought leaders of our time. They are the true investigative journalists who are working on the side of humanity, not for some diabolical agenda. It should never be an “us versus them” mentality. You may even find that these “clueless” ones, the folks in this town that have their guiding star exquisitely aligned, will be here to offer advice in the upcoming days, months, should you need it. We have the facts…..
Addy Thornton Port Townsend
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Editor, the Leader:
Science has always been a continuing course of inquiry. A hypothesis is formed, tested, debated, reviewed and argued over until a consensus is reached. Then additional information is discovered and the debate continues. Science is never “settled”, or we might still be sailing ships off the edge of the world. The discussion is ended when differing opinions are no longer allowed by the majority. Censorship is a sure sign of a weak argument.
We are now in a dangerous period when persuasion is displaced by propaganda. Hate speech is universally condemned, but here we have one of our Leader staff contributors spewing the same stuff we would expect to hear from a recently displaced President. Get ahold of yourself, Mann; you seem to have forgotten your role as a journalist. The Fourth Estate was always a check on power. Look under the rock that hides the information that may expose an uncomfortable truth. Whether your opinion is right or wrong, stifling debate is the antithesis of a robust community discussion in which people have the right and responsibility to explore ideas together. Please join the discussion.
Sebastian Eggert
Port Townsend
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On August 25th, 2021, the Leader reached an historic low with the publication of an ignorant, abusive screed disguised as a column by Bill Mann. His personal choice to play roulette with this experimental gene-based therapy is his business. Insisting everyone join him is not okay. I could go on at length about this man’s obvious lack of personal investigation into the current public policy-driven crisis that is disastrously transforming life as we know it.
But I’d rather take on the real culprits here — the so-called ‘newspaper’— its publisher and editor. The ’newspaper’ which censors the voices of highly educated, well-informed community members who have spent many hundreds of hours researching data, documents and diverging expert opinion around the most important event in human history, yet chooses to give voluminous ink to a malicious, uninformed diatribe from a bitter guy who apparently believes what he hears on CNN.
In the words of an elder British wisdom keeper: “In silencing the free speech of others, you’re silencing your own in this sense — if there is censorship of some free speech, then what is left is not free speech. It’s the freedom to conform to what is believed to be—by authority—acceptable opinion, belief and view.”
This has become the modus operandi for the Leader. It is an unabashed gatekeeper for totalitarian electeds and their appointed bureaucrats. This is not a community service, and it does not serve the Leader itself. The much-deserved downward spiral of its reputation, revenue and ultimately, its existence, will be the subject of its epitaph.
Annette Huenke
Port Townsend
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“Mann Overboard”, for sure.
Quite the unsurprising shock reading Mann’s excremental hit piece, which sadly & typically a mainstream paper would see fit to lend ink.
Dehumanizing “the other” is a time-honored political & media technique for sowing fear & division. “Fear is the foundation of most governments.” – John Adams
There’s eternally an enemy at the gates. If not, governments simply create them. The list is long: the godless heathens, barbarians, indians, commies, terrorists, both “left” & “right”, and now even an invisible one. As ever, the emperor has no clothes, as the subjects bow low to the new madness & nakedness with their own.
The Leader has sunk to a new high of lows — which is saying something after 18 months of unilateral insinuations & censorship.
Increasing numbers of physicians, nurses, orderlies, etc, have declined the jabs, and/or resigned; while a growing portion of regular folks, worldwide, are also refuseniks. And now so simple to turn the screws on “the new enemy” — as the PTB continue to lose control of their narratives.
Well, here we go again. To whit:
Hannah Arendt — “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
Joseph Goebbels, the ace Nazi propagandist sums with three quotes:
“Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.”
“If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes accepted as truth.”
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
A reread of the Nuremberg Trials & Codes is overdue, but for now a central, simple question — if you & we have no idea what’s in these “vaccines”, then what the hell is “informed consent”?’
Alby Baker
Port Townsend
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The Leader should be ashamed for running Bill Mann’s column “Thanks, Spreadnecks, for our COVID miseries.” Its form is the same as WWII propaganda that similarly demonized out-groups and advocated segregating them into camps. What else can one make of “They should not work in offices or schools, should not be allowed in public places” and “Why is it taking so long to completely shut these knuckle-draggers out of civilized society?”
One factor delaying America’s descent into pure bio-fascism is its Bill of Rights. Since “the COVID virus doesn’t care about rights,” Mann pushes to “fire these Typhoid Marys and Harrys,” falsely fearing that the asymptomatic healthy are a threat to others just by existing and breathing… not caring that sick-until-proven-healthy is as tyrannical as guilty-until-proven-innocent.
Beyond the evil form of his rant are the dubious claims Mann makes to justify his agenda. He equates polio vaccines with today’s barely-tested experimental mRNA shots that are already linked with 13,068 adverse-events deaths… more in half a year than all other vaccines combined during VAERS’ 31-year history. [As of 9/17/21, 15,386 Covid vaccine deaths have been reported to VAERS.]
Mann complains “we have to wear masks again because of the boneheads,” but the real reason has nothing to do with the unvaxxed. Instead it is CDC data “showing that vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated” and have “measurable viral loads similar to those who are unvaccinated,” which is the pretext for masks again being pushed.
Mann blames the unvaxxed for “making innocent people sick, especially children,” despite pitiful vaccine ineffectiveness with antibody levels waning in 2-3 months used to justify the current push for twice-yearly booster re-vaccination. By contrast, natural immunity following CV infection is broad and enduring against all variants. Children are at minimal (not “especial”) risk, the CDC reporting only 385 deaths under age 18 in two years, with John Hopkins finding “a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia.”
Mann continually insults the intelligence of “these dolts”, baldly saying “Not being vaxxed is … an IQ test. Over 99 percent of current COVID cases are unvaxxed.” Mann fails his own test by misquoting the Surgeon General’s debunked claim that “99.5% of Covid deaths [not cases] are among the unvaccinated,” a made-up number counting old deaths before the vax was widely available, counting the vaxxed as unvaxxed prior to 2 weeks after their second shot, and counting vaxxed deaths using a much lower PCR Cycle Threshold than unvaxxed deaths. By contrast, England and Israel report 60% of their current deaths are vaccinated.
The overall message is to scapegoat the vaccine hesitant as subhumans who “devastated … the population at large” so deserve discrimination and loss of livelihood. Shame on the Leader for promoting such blatant inflammatory hate speech while censoring all reasoned opposing viewpoints over the past year.
Has a letter you’ve written been censored by the Leader, Peninsula Daily News, or other local media? The Port Townsend Free Press will publish all censored letters to the editor that meet our guidelines for civil discourse*.
Like you, we want
Port Townsend Free Press
to continue!
The Port Townsend Free Press has been a precious window into the unreported corners of our fair (and sometimes not so fair) City of Dreams, as well as an outlet for voices not well served by local media and powers-that-be. As the only uncensored media source in our county, we aim to continue founder and departing editor Jim Scarantino’s legacy.
The three of us bring different backgrounds and experiences to this endeavor. What we share is a commitment to free speech and speaking truth to power. We are nonpartisan, fact-driven, and are not beholden to any advertisers or other commercial interests.
If you are not on our mailing list, please take a moment to sign up — just click here to JOIN OUR MAILING LIST TODAY! You’ll receive email notification whenever a new article is posted. In the spirit of a free press, we welcome your comments, and pledge to provide a civil community forum for conversations that are being censored by other media.
We will do our utmost to rise to the high standards Jim has set!
The specter of totalitarianism has revived the Port Townsend Free Press. A new team is stepping up to keep this exercise of First Amendment rights and free thinking alive.
The Jefferson County Board of Health has declared that “misinformation” is a public health crisis. In Congress, several Democrats have introduced legislation to give government the power to punish “misinformation.” Social media behemoths are coordinating with the federal government to deplatform individuals who express views those in power want suppressed.
Shades of Communist China. Or Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain, where police monitor social media and arrest those who honestly express their views and share facts and information uncomfortable to the ruling class.
The subject matter immediately at issue concerns COVID, its origins, vaccines, COVID’s toll, and the toll of lockdowns and mandates. But our Board of Health does not limit itself to COVID. It has declared that systemic racism—whatever that is—is a public health emergency. It has been flirting with declaring climate change—whatever that is—a public health emergency. A couple years back health concerns were even used as an excuse to try to impose a higher property tax to fund politically-connected groups engaged in housing activism.
The powers of the Board of Health and the Public Health Officer are nearly dictatorial when a public health emergency is declared. There are no brakes in the laws creating these powers. We are seeing declarations of “health emergencies” being abused to advance political and ideological agendas. I would submit that the latest round of extraordinary mandates and penalties are equally about submission and purging those who think for themselves as they are about fighting a virus. That is a a subject for future articles here… and they will be coming.
The Board of Health’s crisis, and that of government health authorities, is that they have squandered the credibility they once possessed almost without question. But instead of acting to regain that credibility, they are now resorting to force and coercion and nudging us towards totalitarianism.
Other nations and states have taken different approaches than we’ve seen in Washington and Jefferson County. Some of those places have had better results with less collateral damage. In other cases, without the heavy hand of draconian mandates, their COVID experience is no worse than ours. Is that misinformation, or just inconvenient facts that show our local leaders may have been wrong and caused unnecessary harm?
Government declarations of what constitutes “misinformation” are a big step towards censorship and the onset of a Dark Age where open, informed and robust investigation and debate is suppressed.
Enter the second-generation Port Townsend Free Press.
A trio of individuals with long histories in this community approached me and asked to continue this project. The Board of Health’s totalitarian actions prompted me to agree. These individuals are non-partisan. They have been active participants in the social and economic life of Port Townsend for decades. They are also very smart and very good writers.
They are:
Ana Wolpin: Ana’s professional and personal pursuits in Jefferson County have included publishing, business development, marketing, graphic design and community service. She was first General Manager of the Food Co-op, past president of the Jefferson County Economic Development Council, former Port Townsend City Council member, founding board member of Habitat for Humanity of East Jefferson County, co-founder of the Port Townsend Peace Movement and co-organizer of Smart Meter Objectors Group (SMOG). Currently she researches, and, weather permitting, gardens.
Annette Huenke: Annette studied International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to heading west, she was a manager for an Auckland-based international publisher of peer-reviewed drug information journals. In 1992 she moved to Port Townsend, opening Ancestral Spirits Gallery in 1993. She is past vice president of the Jeff Co EDC and board member of The Boiler Room. She researches, writes and wanders the forests around PT.
Stephen Schumacher: Stephen graduated with honors in Mathematics from Harvard College and programmed funds transfer systems between Wall Street banks and the Federal Reserve before moving to Port Townsend in 1983. He has served as an officer for various community organizations such as the Food Co-op, Jefferson Land Trust, and the Northwest Nutritional Foods Association. He co-created The Port Townsend Leader’s original online newspaper and programs shipboard stability software used by naval architects.
Ana, Annette and Stephen have written excellent articles for the PT Free Press. They are tenacious researchers. Their work here, so far, has been focused on COVID, but PT Free Press will continue to be a publication of general interest. They have discussed with me some exciting ideas for broadening the community’s participation in this forum. I am persuaded of their integrity and commitment to honoring the original spirit of this project: “Resist the dominant paradigm, speak truth to power, celebrate diversity.” They will continue to tell the stories not being told and present news and views you are not going to get anywhere else.
I will contribute articles occasionally, but my interests and time are being claimed by other endeavors.
Thank you for supporting us the past 3.5 years. Please give the new team the same support and encouragement. They will continue to use our existing email alert network but will establish a new Facebook page as I will be leaving Facebook entirely. Look for “The New Port Townsend Free Press” FB page and be sure to “like” or “follow” their work.
Happy trails,
Jim Scarantino, Founder and former editor, Port Townsend Free Press
It is time to close out this endeavor. I want to thank all our contributors and readers over the past almost four years. Together we brought new voices into the public dialogue, and reported facts the public has a right to know. We made some mistakes. We learned a lot about ourselves and our community. I keep hearing we made a difference, our work was valued and we will be missed.
The greatest compliment we received was a criticism of sorts: “”Accurate, despite the source.” I really like that.
I am now completely engaged in other projects and activities and just don’t have the time to keep this going. The page will remain here as a resource and archive, but I won’t be adding to this body of work.
Best wishes to all of you. Jim Scarantino, Editor
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