fear mongering – The Burning Platform

Why this Nonstop Fear Mongering?

Today, March 31, 2022, a headline in the New York Times reads: “Caution Urged as States Slow the Virus Fight” with a subhead “Experts Voice Concern as Variant Spreads.”

The article occupies a 7-paragraph column on the front page and continues to fill an entire half page inside.

A person confronted with such a headline naturally asks herself: What newsworthy event has triggered this story not just on the front page of a major national newspaper, but at the very top? Has a panel of SARS-CoV-2 experts issued a statement? Who are the “experts” and in what forum are they “voicing concern?” Was there a press conference or announcement made by someone in charge of Covid policy?

The answers the reader gathers from the first seven paragraphs of the article are that, in fact, no event triggered the story, and there was no statement or forum or press conference or announcement. The rest of the article confirms this total lack of actual news.

Okay, the reader thinks. Who, then, are these experts who are voicing concern? Maybe the reporters scored exclusive interviews with prominent epidemiologists or public health leaders who issued serious warnings that are important to publicize. Perusing the article once again, she gets to the seventh paragraph before any “experts” are mentioned at all.

The first is identified as “Dr. Ben Weston, chief health policy advisor for Milwaukee County, Wis.,” and he is quoted as saying that when a boat has just gotten off a large tidal wave it “would be a strange time to throw out the life jackets.” So… nothing newsworthy, medically or scientifically relevant, or in any way helpful there.

A quick Google search yields the following information about Dr. Weston’s credentials: He is an Associate Professor in Emergency Medicine and the Chief Health Policy Advisor for Milwaukee County. He oversees medical services for 15 fire departments and practices emergency medicine in a Level 1 Trauma Center. His training is in emergency medicine and emergency medical services. His research interests include “prehospital care, resuscitation, health equity and public health surveillance.”

Thus far, it sounds like Dr. Weston has lots of experience and expertise in emergency medicine. Nowhere does the reader find any mention of training, expertise or research in epidemiology generally or SARS-CoV-2 in particular.

So why is Dr. Weston the first “expert” quoted in an article about how concerned we should be about the state of our “fight” against a spreading “variant?”

Dr. Weston’s bio page on the Medical College of Wisconsin website provides a clue: “Dr. Weston served as the Medical Director for the Milwaukee County/City/Municipality COVID-19 Emergency Operations Center. He has been featured on MSNBC, CNN, BBC, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, and in Politico and the New York Times.”

An emergency medical doctor who was appointed to head a municipal Covid emergency center has become a top “expert” on SARS-Cov-2 because he has apparently been featured in lots of media stories about it. As far as this reader could find, Dr. Weston has conducted no research before or during the pandemic relevant to the subject.

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This is, to be sure, in no way an indictment of Dr. Weston, who is doing important and difficult work as an emergency doctor every day. It is a comment on the quality of “experts” quoted in a front-page New York Times article.

Next the reader wonders: If there’s no news event and no newsworthy interview with a national or international expert, maybe there’s some reason that’s just emerged for “caution” to be “urged” and for “concern” to be expressed. Maybe a new study has come out, new data, or a new analysis of data showing that for states to “slow the virus fight” is a bad idea.

Rereading the entire article, yet again, the reader finds no reference to any scientific studies or analysis at all. The actual Covid-related facts reported in the article are as follows: Cases have been “falling swiftly in recent weeks,” a new variant “is now the dominant version of new virus cases in the United States,” and new infections are “edging upward once again in several states including New York.”

The only actual numbers are presented in the context of a lament about how poorly the United States is doing in its Covid response: “Americans are still lagging behind many other countries in vaccination. Only about 65 percent of Americans have received initial shots, and less than one-third of Americans have had a first booster shot,” and “fewer than 225,000 shots” are being “administered across the country each day.”

Then, inevitably, comes the dreaded death statistic against which we must hopelessly capitulate and withdraw all argument or criticism: “The virus is still causing the deaths of more than 700 Americans each day.” Clearly, the article implies, hundreds of deaths must be a reason for concern. We can’t relax when people are still dying!

To summarize: A top headline on the front page of arguably the most influential newspaper in the United States makes it sound like states are doing something wrong by scaling back their Covid response efforts and that experts think we should worry about a variant that’s spreading. The actual content of the article reveals that there is no new evidence or reason to believe states are doing anything wrong, no new evidence that we need to be concerned about the variant, and the experts are mostly local public health officials and doctors with little expertise or research in fields related to SARS-CoV-2.*

The only purpose this reader can infer for such a front-page headline and article is to continue fueling public anxiety. To what end? Maybe the reporters and editors at the Times believe they’re advancing the cause of public health by stoking panic, even long after it is justified by the level of the threat (if it ever was justified in the first place). Or maybe, to be a bit more cynical (or realistic?) about it, the reporters and editors know that fear and panic draw readers, especially around Covid, so they just can’t let go.

In either case, this reader condemns the fear mongering that has been rampant in the New York Times and many other major news outlets since the beginning of the pandemic, and that has caused her to lose faith in the neutrality and integrity of what was once her favorite newspaper.

- Debbie Lerman

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Putting the Terrorist Threat in Perspective

Guest Post by Sheldon Richman

Steve Rhodes/Flickr

Over the weekend CNN breathlessly reported as “Breaking News”—it breathlessly reports everything as “Breaking News”—a new poll indicating that people are increasingly frightened about terrorism. The accompanying web story stated, “Terrorism has eclipsed the economy as voters’ top pick for the biggest issue facing America, a New York Times/CBS News poll has found. Last month only [4 percent] of Americans said terrorism was the most important problem, according to The New York Times. Now nearly one in five … believe it is.”

The story goes on:

Following terrorist attacks in Paris and in San Bernardino, California, the poll said Americans are more fearful about the likelihood of another terrorist attack than at any other time since the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001. …

More than four in 10 Americans—44%—believe an attack is “very” likely to happen in the next few months. And 70% say that ISIS is a major threat to America’s security.

Nearly 60% of people are “very” concerned about the threat of terrorism against Americans committed by elements entering the U.S. from other countries. And 63% are “very” concerned about the threat of terrorism against Americans committed by people currently living in the U.S. who are inspired by foreign extremists.”

How likely is an American to be a victim? Curiously, CNN never bothers to say.

In fact, the likelihood is so low that the saturation coverage—which is better described as fear-mongering—looks ridiculous. Commonplace things are far more likely to kill Americans than terrorism—from any source—yet you won’t learn that by watching TV or reading the daily newspaper.

Continue reading “Putting the Terrorist Threat in Perspective”

MORE FEAR MONGERING FROM OUR DHS PROTECTORS

Here we go again. Time to make the sheep cower, while our DHS shepherds protect us from another phantom wolf. How predictable. DHS has to substantiate their $1 billion annual budget by acting like they are saving us from phantom predators who never materialize. I guess they’ve run out of dupes to lure into fake terrorist plots, so now they just issue dire warnings of impending doom. Our government keepers are not only using the Oregon shooting as their latest attempt to disarm law abiding citizens, but now they are using it to make our special millennial snowflakes beg for the police state to protect them and save them from being killed by anonymous posters on social media. They have successfully freaked out every college and university in the Philadelphia area, as if the police, FBI, or ATF have ever successfully foiled a real terrorist plot.

Some anonymous idiot on 4chan makes some vague threat referencing the Oregon shooter as part of some rebellion, and now every school in the Philly area is on lockdown. They were interviewing students who say they will hide in their dorms rather than venture to class at 2:00 today. What a fucking joke. What a bunch of low IQ pussies. The fucking idiot in Oregon was a 26 year old emotionally disturbed virgin loner from a broken home who was probably on psychotropic drugs (not a peep from the MSM about that). He had no friends and lived in an apartment with his mommy. He wasn’t part of a revolution. Use your fucking brains people.

I thought the fucking NSA captures every electronic communication in the country. They can’t figure out who supposedly made the threat because they posted anonymously. Give me a fucking break. They can trace the IP address to a location. They can supposedly tell when they are hacked by Russians or Chinese, but they can’t track down a poster on a website?

This is just more bullshit from our government keepers to make us beg for their protection. Never let a mass shooting go to waste. I wonder what threat level I should be observing today.

FBI, ATF warn of threat of violence against ‘university near Philadelphia’

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) —

The FBI and ATF are warning about a non-specific threat of violence against “a university near Philadelphia” on Monday.

The FBI released the following statement over the weekend:

Out of an abundance of caution, the FBI Philadelphia Field Office notified local colleges and universities of a social media posting which threatened violence at a Philadelphia-area college or university for Monday, October 5. No specific college or university was identified in the posting. We encourage students, faculty, and employees at area colleges and universities to follow the guidance of their campus security officials. The FBI will continue to work with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners to investigate threats of violence, and, as always, we ask the public to report suspicious activity to law enforcement.

The threat was posted on 4chan, a message board where everyone is anonymous, last Friday, the day after the shooting in Oregon. It praises the gunman as a fellow member of the “Beta Rebellion.”

“On October fifth, at 1pm Central time, a fellow robot will take up arms at a university near Philadelphia,” the post reads.

Continue reading “MORE FEAR MONGERING FROM OUR DHS PROTECTORS”

EBOLA – FEAR MONGERING OR REAL THREAT?

I’m a born skeptic. When I’m told that 3,300 people in Africa have died from the disease over the last few months, I don’t go running for my bunker. There are 7 billion people on this planet and a miniscule fraction of them died from ebola. To put that in perspective, 1 million people die from Malaria in Africa every year. For the math challenged, that is 2,740 people PER DAY. So why is the world in such an uproar about ebola? The American healthcare workers who contracted it, were cured within a couple weeks after getting treatment in the U.S.

Is ebola a nasty disease? Yes.

Is it going to become an epidemic in the U.S.? No.

Will it be used by doomer websites to drive visitor counts? Yes.

Will it be used by media outlets to increase ratings? Yes.

Will it be used by “scientists” and drug companies to increase their funding and profits? Yes.

Will it be used by the government to further restrict my liberties and freedoms? Hell Yes.

Will it be used to instill fear in the sheep and keep them distracted from how badly they are getting fucked by those in control? Absolutely.

Will I be losing any sleep over the ebola fear mongering? Not one minute.

Now for my wise and sage advice. DON’T GO TO AFRICA. DON’T HAVE SEX WITH AN AFRICAN. DON’T LET AN AFRICAN SNEEZE IN YOUR FACE.

The slimy Wall Street shysters are already profiting from the fear mongering by convincing muppets to buy obscure drug companies and hazmat suit makers. If there were justice in this world, dozens of infected ebola victims would be unleashed into the executive offices of every Wall Street banking entity and told to spit in the faces of Jamie Dimon and the rest of the criminal cabal. A man can dream, can’t he?

Now back to your regularly scheduled financial doom.

Sen. Rand Paul sounds Ebola alarm

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, warned that the U.S. could be underestimating the potential for Ebola to wreak havoc in the U.S. because of “political correctness.”

“It’s a big mistake to underestimate the potential for problems worldwide,” Paul said on “The Laura Ingraham Show” Tuesday.

Citing reassurances by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Tom Frieden, that there was little risk of a traveler bringing Ebola to the United States and causing an outbreak, Paul countered, “I really think that it is being dominated by political correctness and I think because of political correctness we’re not really making sound, rational, scientific decisions on this.”

The CDC announced Tuesday that the first U.S. case of Ebola had been confirmed in a Liberian man who had traveled to Dallas to visit family.

“We should not underestimate the transmissibility of this,” Paul, an opthamologist by trade, said, noting that even doctors and nurses wearing gloves, gowns and masks are contracting the disease. “My suspicion is that it’s a lot more transmissible than that if people who are taking every precaution are getting it. There are people getting it who simply helped people get in or out of a taxicab.”

The World Health Organization says that health-care workers have frequently become infected while treating patients with the virus because of “close contact with patients when infection control precautions are not strictly practiced.”

Paul, who is thinking about running for president, also questioned President Obama’s decision to dispatch 3,000 military personnel to West Africa to help combat the spread of the disease.

“Where is disease most transmissible? When you are confined on a ship,” Paul said.

He also assailed doctors like Ezekiel Emanuel – the brother of former White House Chief of Staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel – who said on MSNBC Tuesday that people who suggest there will be an outbreak in the U.S. are “fear mongering.”

Paul pointed to past outbreaks, including the Spanish flu in 1918 and the Bubonic plague in the 14th century that killed millions to demonstrate that disease pandemics can spread rapidly.

Earlier in the show, he sarcastically said to Ingraham, “I can’t believe that you don’t think it’s enough of a plan to prevent worldwide pandemic to cough into your elbow. If you just bring your elbow up to your mouth and cough into it, surely that will stop a worldwide pandemic,” a reference to the president’s instructions to the American public in 2009 to sneeze into their sleeves, rather than their hands, to help stop the spread of the H1N1 flu virus.

Not all politicians share Paul’s view that the U.S. is taking insufficient precautions. On the other end of the spectrum Wednesday was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who held a news conference to calm residents of his state, ground zero for the first U.S. Ebola case.

“There are few places in the world better equipped to meet the challenge that is posed in this case,” said Perry, who is also considering a presidential bid. “Texas is one of only 13 states certified by the CDC to conduct diagnostic Ebola testing. And we have the health care professionals and the institutions that are second to none. The public should have every confidence that the highly trained professionals involved here will succeed in this very important mission,” Perry said.

“This case is serious. Rest assured that our system is working as it should,” he continued. “Professionals on every level of the chain of command know what to do to minimize this potential risk to the people of Texas and of this country, for that matter.”

EBOLA – OVERPOPULATION CURE

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m supposed to be scared of the dreaded ebola virus. We’re all going to die. It’s the fear mongering tactic for this week. One week it is Putin. The next week it’s ISIS. One week it’s terrorists streaming across our southern border. It’s always global warming (oh yeah climate change). I don’t give two fucks about the ebola “epidemic”. Why don’t they create an ice bucket challenge to cure it? We cured ALS last week. Right?

It seems the doom websites have bought into this terrible threat hook line and sinker. This is nothing more than another way to keep the sheep docile and cooperative as the authorities pretend to protect them from a phantom menace.

Ebola is not in the United States. You see we’re a first world country where we don’t piss where we drink or shit in our front yard. Africa is an overpopulated cesspool inhabited by ignorant dreadfully poor people who live their entire short lives in utter squalor. Most of the countries are run by dictators and socialists. The people reproduce at 4 times the rate of first world countries. Of course they are going to create disease and starvation on a massive scale. There are consequences for every action. Did you notice how quickly the infected Americans recovered when they got to a first world country?

Sorry folks. It’s not our problem. We do not have the financial resources to save all seven billion people on this over-populated planet. We already spend $2 billion per day more than we generate in taxes. The same control freaks who blather on about population control are the same ones saying we have to do something about the ebola “crisis”.

I’ve got an idea. Let Africa worry about their problems. They can either take the necessary steps to control their populations or disease will control it for them. It really is pretty simple. A telethon with George Clooney and the rest of the Hollywood douchbags will just perpetuate the continued behavior of these countries.

Aldous Huxley pondered the future of the planet and overpopulation in 1958 in Brave New World Revisited:

“In the bad old days children with considerable, or even with slight, hereditary defects rarely survived. Today, thanks to sanitation, modern pharmacology and the social conscience, most of the children born with hereditary defects reach maturity and multiply their kind. Under the conditions now prevailing, every advance in medicine will tend to be offset by a corresponding advance in the survival rate of individuals cursed by some genetic insufficiency. In spite of new wonder drugs and better treatment (indeed, in a certain sense, precisely because of these things), the physical health of the general population will show no improvement, and may even deteriorate. And along with a decline of average healthiness there may well go a decline in average intelligence.

Meanwhile we find ourselves confronted by a most disturbing moral problem. We know that the pursuit of good ends does not justify the employment of bad means. But what about those situations, now of such frequent occurrence, in which good means have end results which turn out to be bad?

For example, we go to a tropical island and with the aid of DDT we stamp out malaria and, in two or three years, save hundreds of thousands of lives. This is obviously good. But the hundreds of thousands of human beings thus saved, and the millions whom they beget and bring to birth, cannot be adequately clothed, housed, educated or even fed out of the island’s available resources. Quick death by malaria has been abolished; but life made miserable by undernourishment and over-crowding is now the rule, and slow death by outright starvation threatens ever greater numbers.”

Advances in medicine have allowed more people to live lives of squalor, hunger, and slow death. It’s a moral dilemma that cannot be solved by the American Empire with more money printing. We are busy waging wars around the world to reduce the surplus population.

And by the way, how about an inconvenient fact? There have been less than 2,000 ebola deaths on the entire planet since this dreadful outbreak. How come we weren’t worried about the hundreds of thousands dying from malaria or malnutrition? I guess those deaths aren’t sexy and scary enough. Call me when 7 million have died and I’ll pretend to be worried.

At least Michael Snyder had something to write about yesterday.

16 Stunning Quotes From Global Health Officials On The Ebola Epidemic

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

Ebola continues to spread an an exponential rate. According to the World Health Organization, 40 percent of all Ebola cases have happened in just the last three weeks. At this point, the official numbers tell us that approximately 3,967 people have gotten the virus in Africa and more than 2,105 people have died.

That is quite alarming, but the real problem will arise if this disease continues to spread at an exponential pace. One team of researchers has used computer modeling to project that the number of Ebola cases will reach 10,000 by September 24th if current trends continue. And if the spread of Ebola does not slow down, we could be dealing with 100,000 cases by December. Even the WHO is admitting that the number of cases is likely to grow to 20,000 before too much longer, and global health officials are now starting to use apocalyptic language to describe this outbreak.

For people in the western world that have never seen anything like this other than in the movies, it can be difficult to grasp just how horrible this epidemic truly is. In the areas of west Africa where Ebola is spreading, fear and panic are everywhere, food shortages are becoming a serious problem and there have been reports of dead bodies rotting in the streets. People are avoiding hospitals and clinics because of paranoia about the fact that so many health workers have contracted the disease. According to the World Health Organization, more than 240 health workers have gotten the virus so far and more than 120 of them have perished.

We have never seen anything like this in any of our lifetimes, and the scary part is that this might only be just the beginning.

The following are 16 apocalyptic quotes from global health officials about this horrific Ebola epidemic…

#1 Dr. Tom Frieden, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “It is the world’s first Ebola epidemic, and it’s spiraling out of control. It’s bad now, and it’s going to get worse in the very near future. There is still a window of opportunity to tamp it down, but that window is closing. We really have to act now.”

#2 Dr. Joanne Liu, the international president of Doctors Without Borders: “Riots are breaking out. Isolation centres are overwhelmed. Health workers on the frontline are becoming infected and are dying in shocking numbers.”

#3 David Nabarro, senior United Nations system coordinator for Ebola disease: “This outbreak is moving ahead of efforts to control it.”

#4 Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s assistant director-general for emergency operations: “This far outstrips any historic Ebola outbreak in numbers. The largest outbreak in the past was about 400 cases.”

#5 Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organization: “…we hope to stop the transmission in six to nine months”.

#6 Dr. Daniel Bausch, associate professor in the department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane University: “You have a very dangerous virus in three of the countries in the world that are least equipped to deal with it. The scale of this outbreak has just outstripped the resources. That’s why it’s become so big.”

#7 Gayle Smith, senior director at the National Security Council: “This is not an African disease. This is a virus that is a threat to all humanity.”

#8 Dr. Tom Frieden, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “The level of outbreak is beyond anything we’ve seen—or even imagined.”

#9 Vincent Martin, head of an FAO unit in Dakar: “This is different than every other Ebola situation we’ve ever had. It’s spreading widely, throughout entire countries, through multiple countries, in cities and very fast.”

#10 Dr. Richard Besser, health and medical editor for ABC News: “Emergency rooms are closed, many hospital wards are as well leaving people who are sick with heart disease, trauma, pregnancy complications, pneumonia, malaria and all the everyday health emergencies with nowhere to go.”

#11 Bukar Tijani, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization regional representative for Africa: “Access to food has become a pressing concern for many people in the three affected countries and their neighbours.”

#12 Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director-general for health security: “People are hungry in these communities. They don’t know how they are going to get food.”

#13 Dr. Daniel Bausch, associate professor in the department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane University: “This is for sure the worst situation I’ve ever seen.”

#14 Dr. Tom Frieden, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “I could not possibly overstate the need for an urgent response.”

#15 Official WHO statement: “Staff at the outbreak sites see evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths vastly underestimate the magnitude of the outbreak.”

#16 Dr. Joanne Liu, the international president of Doctors Without Borders: “It is impossible to keep up with the sheer number of infected people pouring into facilities. In Sierra Leone, infectious bodies are rotting in the streets.”

Despite all of these warnings, a lot of people in the western world are not too concerned about this epidemic because they have faith that our advanced technology will prevent a widespread Ebola outbreak in the United States and Europe.

But I wouldn’t be so certain about that.

So far, the most promising experimental Ebola drug seems to be ZMapp. In clinical trials, it has been doing very well on monkeys.

However, it hasn’t turned out to be a silver bullet for humans so far. Two out of the seven people that have received ZMapp have died, and as CBS News recently explained, current supplies are exhausted and it takes a really long time to make more of this stuff…

ZMapp’s maker, Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., of San Diego, has said the small supply of the drug is now exhausted and that it will take several months to make more. The drug is grown in tobacco plants and was developed with U.S. government support.

Kobinger said it takes about a month to make 20 to 40 doses at a Kentucky plant where the drug is being produced. Officials have said they are looking at other facilities and other ways to ramp up production, and Kobinger said there were plans for a clinical trial to test ZMapp in people early next year.

The cold, hard truth is that Ebola is a brutally efficient killer for which we do not have a cure at the moment.

And what makes things even more complicated is that a different strain of Ebola is now spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A treatment that works for one strain of Ebola may not work on another strain.

So let us hope and pray that Ebola does not reach the United States.

If it does, it could potentially spread like wildfire.

PENN STATE TERRORIST OR DUMBASS POTHEAD?

Don’t you love how the MSM loves to use the term Weapons of Mass Destruction? Big bad axis of evil dictators are supposed to have them. We now know that cookware counts as a weapon of mass destruction in Boston. Now we have a Russian college engineering pothead student at Penn State Altoona being caught with a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION. I wonder if the U.S. Military will be invading Altoona to liberate its people.

CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the rest of the fear mongering legacy media are breathlessly reporting this latest terrorist threat. He is one of those dreaded Russians. Hide under your beds. The Russians are coming.

A Penn State Altoona freshman from Moscow, Russia, was arrested late Friday and charged with possessing a weapon of mass destruction and risking a catastrophe, after city police allegedly found a homemade bomb and bomb-making materials in his Juniata apartment – where they had come to look for a marijuana-growing operation.

The Altoona Mirror doesn’t seem to be following the MSM scare tactic headlines. They actually interviewed the dude’s roommate and got the following responses:

One of Miftakhov’s apartment mates, Andrew Leff of Bucks County, contradicted Miftakov’s statement that he hadn’t detonated anything in Pennsylvania, saying that during the current semester, Miftakhov had set off three “mini-bombs” just outside their apartment, creating small craters in the ground.

Recently, Miftakhov had showed Leff a bomb made by mixing chemicals in an aerosol whipped cream container, Leff said.

“I said, ‘Dude, you’ve got to get rid of that,'” Leff said Saturday afternoon in the snow outside the apartment.

Miftakhov later told Leff he’d done as suggested.

“[But] apparently he didn’t,” Leff said.

Miftakhov was a “crazy kid” who did “impulsive things,” Leff said.

“He was off the wall,” Leff said. “It’s not surprising to me at all [to learn about the arrest].”

Leff said Miftakhov was a “dumb kid” who did what he did because he was bored.

Leff didn’t see Miftakhov as truly dangerous, he added.

Why let the truth get in the way of a sensationalist fear mongering headline designed to keep the ignorant masses fearful, begging for more government protection and the further restriction of our liberty and freedom? A headline about a pothead engineering student who liked to create explosions in remote fields just doesn’t do the job.