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Censorship’s slope is always slippery & the Internet Archive’s embrace of biased ‘fact-checking’ proves it

By Helen Buyniski | RT | November 3, 2020

The Internet Archive has begun slapping “fact-checks” on archived pages, supposedly to provide “context” they’re missing. But readers don’t need their thoughts babysat, and it’s a small step to deleting the page altogether.

The nonprofit, which operates the Wayback Machine – an archive of old web pages spanning decades – announced last week that it would begin adding “fact-checks” and “convenient links to contextual information” to certain archived pages, unsettling internet freedom activists and researchers who rely upon the 40-petabyte mega-archive to do their work.

NEW: fact-checking & context banners now on some #WaybackMachine pages. Our goal is to preserve the Web as it was published.In addition, fact checks & context about the original web page are important data for our users.Learn more abt our new efforts:https://t.co/bUG55zQOsE

— Internet Archive (@internetarchive) October 30, 2020

The Internet Archive insisted in its blog post announcing the change that fact-checks were “important data for our users.” A glimpse at the replies excoriating the archive for taking a big step closer to turning its once-venerable servers into a giant memory hole might suggest otherwise. However, a visit to the Archive’s “about” page reveals exactly which ‘users’ the site is striving to serve by shoehorning fact-checks into its formerly faithful attempts to preserve the internet.

The Archive’s top funders happen to be the primary financial backers of the fact-checking industry – specifically the Knight Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation, and eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund. These entities also fund the Poynter Institute, the digital journalism powerhouse that has transformed fact-checking from a noble profession conducted out of readers’ sight to a public scolding tactic aimed at quashing dissent. Fact-checkers are no longer working on the same side as journalists – the new breed, trained by Poynter and the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) it operates, are eternally on the prowl for narrative deviance. The pinnacle of professional achievement is calling out a high-profile journalist for veering away from prevailing narrative orthodoxy and applying the “fake news” label. And Archive.org has just become a potent weapon in their arsenal.

Bots in the belfry

Ironically, this strain of fact-checkers is notorious for its loose grasp of facts. Archive.org uses an old version of a page from independent news collective IndyMedia to illustrate the new fact-checking policy, linking it to an investigation by fact-checker Graphika that declares it’s part of a Russian propaganda network with the ominous name of ‘Secondary Infektion’. Any right-thinking reader will scurry away from the page as fast as possible, lest they be “infekted” by those nasty Russian bots they’ve heard so much about.

Yet Graphika employs discredited conspiracy theorists like Ben Nimmo, a character assassin affiliated with the UK’s nefarious Integrity Initiative and NATO-backed pro-war think tank the Atlantic Council who sees Russians under his bed at night and specializes in smearing UK citizens as bots. Graphika’s flashy illustrations, though impressive-looking, appear to be an attempt to distract from the lack of proof for its allegations (and the presence of shills like Nimmo on the masthead of almost every “investigation” it has ever conducted).

The Internet Archive’s list of fact-checkers bristles with similarly dodgy entities. Also listed is the Stanford Internet Observatory, whose head Renee di Resta previously worked with New Knowledge (now Yonder) – the firm whose fake “Russian bots” infamously gifted Democrats a Senate seat in 2017. Fellow “fact-checker” Lead Stories is little more than a clubhouse for CNN alumni. PolitiFact is itself owned by the Poynter Institute, and the Washington Post recently paid out millions of dollars to a high school boy for smearing him with a viral video. The reputations of these fact-deficient fact-checkers benefit significantly from having their credibility laundered through the Internet Archive, which has historically been seen as above the partisan fray.

Slope gets slippery

When Archive.org first began applying warning notices to old pages in May, tacking its “yellow boxes of shame” onto deleted posts from the Medium.com blogging platform that had been removed for violating that site’s strict policy on “disinformation” related to the novel coronavirus, defenders insisted the policy was just a one-off. There was no way the Internet Archive would become the memory hole, they said. Last week’s developments have proved them wrong.

The Internet Archive surely knows by now – after watching Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube get sandblasted by the media and Congress alike for not cracking down even harder on political wrongthink – that anything short of a total purge of dissent will merely lead to complaints a platform isn’t removing enough “disinformation.” These people can be ignored, but if one throws them a bone, they won’t let go until they’ve gotten the whole skeleton.

As George Orwell himself said, “he who controls the past controls the future.” The Internet Archive’s deep-pocketed backers now control the internet’s shared past, and there’s nothing stopping them from highlighting it all and hitting “delete.”

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

November 3, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Dr. Fauci admits the PCR test for coronavirus is all but useless as it is administered in the US

See also:

PCR Inventor: “It doesn’t tell you that you are sick”

The MSM have been going all out trying to pretend this never happened, turns out it did

By David James | OffGuardian | October 5, 2020

There has been a great deal of controversy over claims that Kary Mullis, the creator of the PCR technology that is being widely used to test for so-called ‘cases’ of COVID-19, did not believe the technology was suitable for detecting a meaningful presence of a virus.

Those making these assertions were attacked and ‘fact checked’ (deemed inappropriate by propagandists) by news outlets claiming that Mullis’ comments had been taken out of context.

So when a video surfaces with Mullis talking about the efficacy of the technology it is worth paying close attention to what he is saying. He died last year, so it is the best ‘fact check’ available. In the video, Mullis is discussing AIDS. He first deals with a criticism from the audience that the PCR technology is being misused [timestamp – 48:40].

“I don’t think you can misuse PCR. [It is] the results; the interpretation of it. If they can find this virus in you at all – and with PCR, if you do it well, you can find almost anything in anybody.”

Mullis does not explicitly say that the PCR technology is unsuitable for detecting a meaningful presence of COVID-19. How could he, given that he died before it came to light? But such a conclusion can safely be inferred:

“It starts making you believe in the sort of Buddhist notion that everything is contained in everything else. If you can amplify one single molecule up to something you can really measure, which PCR can do, then there is just very few molecules that you don’t have at least one single one of in your body.”

Mullis then addresses the question of what should be considered meaningful, which is the central issue with the use of the PCR tests. Do the ‘case’ numbers being used around the world by governments to impose police states and egregious lockdowns of the population, especially in my home state of Victoria, actually mean anything? The answer seems to be ‘no’:

“That could be thought of as a misuse: to claim that it [a PCR test] is meaningful. It tells you something about nature and what is there. To test for that one thing and say it has a special meaning is, I think, the problem. The measurement for it is not exact; it is not as good as the measurement for apples. The tests are based on things that are invisible and the results are inferred in a sense. It allows you to take a miniscule amount of anything and make it measureable and then talk about it.”

Mullis also addresses, by implication, another question about the incidence of ‘cases’. If you test positive – and Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration has admitted that they do not know if this means you are infected or not – are you actually sick? In the past that is what the word ‘cases’ has meant: someone unwell from a disease. Mullis’ position is clear [emphasis added – timecode 51:49]:

“PCR is just a process that allows you to make a whole lot of something out of something. It doesn’t tell you that you are sick, or that the thing that you ended up with was going to hurt you or anything like that.”

Mullis’ comments are unsurprising for anyone who has been paying attention to the behaviour of the authorities during the COVID-19 catastrophe. The technology relies on amplifying results many times over. If they are amplified less than about 35 times, no-one will test positive. If they are amplified 60 times, everyone will test positive. The flawed thinking is obvious enough.

Why is there such a concerted effort to quell anyone exposing problems with the use of the technology? There is no doubt that these attacks are designed to deceive (including predictable use of that shoddy ad hominem phrase ‘conspiracy theory’, a rhetorical trick to insult people rather than address their arguments).

Look closely at the ‘fact checking’. The Reuters article uses a mixture of a straw man argument and a red herring. It asserts it was wrong to claim that Mullis said that: “PCR tests cannot detect free infectious viruses at all”. This is obviously a deliberate misrepresentation intended to wrongly characterise the opponents’ argument and then ‘expose’ it as false.

Then we get the red herring. The Reuters article claims that: “The quote is actually from an article written by John Lauritsen in December 1996 about HIV and AIDS, not COVID-19 (here).” Neat trick. Assert that your opponents got their sources wrong, and then dismiss them because of their poor research.

It is transparently untruthful, but why are these news outlets pushing such propaganda?

In one way, it could be said to be just business as usual. For those of us who have worked in newsrooms, especially in the finance and business sections, being subjected to propaganda is as routine as the daily cups of coffee.

The techniques are endless: outright lying, misleading but true facts, half truths, quarter truths, lack of context, lack of corporate memory, deceptive jargon, false statistics, lobbying by astro-turf organisations, threats of legal action, threats to complain to the editor or proprietor, threats of removal of access to important sources, promises of getting first access to important stories, subtle requests from former colleagues for assistance, and, of course, my favourites – free lunches at expensive restaurants and travel junkets.

The situation, always bad, has worsened with the destruction of the media’s business model by Facebook and Google, who have taken half the world’s advertising revenue. It has forced the hollowed out newsrooms to rely more on outside news feeds. And, as Matt Taibbi has noted, mainstream media organisations are, for commercial reasons, no longer interested in “selling a vision of reality they perceive to be acceptable to a broad mean”.

Instead, they deliberately sow division and only appeal to niches. Forget facts; inciting prejudice comes first.

But none of that explains why there is such intense propaganda about COVID-19.

The endless spin inflicted on media organisations is transparently related to satisfying greed or enhancing power, but what is the motive here? True, the US health system is one of the biggest profiteering exercises in the world, corrupting health everywhere. Health accounts for 16 per cent of US GDP, which is about twice the level of, say, Australia or the UK (countries that have universal care).

That extra eight per cent equates with $1.6 trillion in profiteering, or about two per cent of the global economy – an eye-watering scam conducted by pharmaceutical companies, hospital conglomerates, insurance companies, lawyers, consultants and so on. Those vultures will be trying to control the media to profit from a vaccine and who knows what else.

But they will only be one group of players and probably not the main ones. The most important question is who is funding the ‘fake news’ that COVID-19 is an existential threat and what is their agenda? Most countries have been greatly harmed. It has resulted in a medical dictatorship that has shut down Victoria; health bureaucrats may, absurdly, be given police powers.

There is a very sinister international agenda here, but the outline of it is, so far, only blurry.

One more (short):

The Great Kary Mullis, inventor of the abused PCR test talks about Antony Fauci

Wardo Rants

Just so that people understand, Dr. Kary Mullis winds up dead just weeks before the Gates Foundation, World Economic Forum, and John Hopkins (Michael Bloomberg) School of Medicine held their “Event 201.”

November 3, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

New study shows low-carb diets would save BILLIONS currently wasted on drugs. But will Big Pharma allow it?

By Dr Malcomb Kendrick | November 3, 2020

If you want to avoid dying of COVID19, one of the most important things you can do, if you are overweight, is to shed the pounds

‘…. in the first meta-analysis of its kind, published on 26 August in Obesity Reviews, an international team of researchers pooled data from scores of peer-reviewed papers capturing 399,000 patients. They found that people with obesity who contracted SARS-CoV-2 were 113% more likely than people of healthy weight to land in the hospital, 74% more likely to be admitted to an ICU, and 48% more likely to die.’ 1

Why? Well, the ‘why’ centres around the damaging effect of raised blood glucose on endothelial cells and… it gets complicated.

For now, though, the most important thing is not to understand the complex metabolic and physiological pathways involved, it is simply to help people to lose weight, and this is where Dr David Unwin comes in.

For years now he has believed, as I do, that the main driver of weight gain, leading on to type 2 (T2) diabetes, is a high carbohydrate diet.

This, of course, is the exact opposite of what we have been told for decades by the ‘experts’ who demonise fat and promote carbohydrates. We have the ‘eat-well’ plate, and the ‘food pyramid’, and hundreds of thousands of dieticians around the world, all promoting carbohydrates as the ‘healthy’ option.

Dutifully following this advice, the entire population of the western world has become fatter, and fatter… and fatter. By the way, this is not a coincidence; it is cause and effect.

Getting back to Dr Unwin, years ago he despaired of ever getting any of his patients to lose weight. It was so disheartening that he furtively studied his pension plan, and dreamed of retirement, so fed up was he becoming. Then one day a patient came in who had lost a lot of weight and kept it off.

At first this woman was reluctant to say how she had done it, as she feared the inevitable criticism. In the end, she told Dr Unwin that she had lost weight, and kept it off, by eating a low carbohydrate diet. In Dr Unwin’s own words:

‘A few years ago, I was interested to find out how a patient had improved her diabetic control.  She confessed she had ignored my advice and learnt a much better way to look after herself, from the internet. I suppressed my wounded pride and looked at the Low Carb Forum on Diabetes.co.uk There were thousands of type two diabetics on there ignoring their doctors – and getting great results (now that is just not allowed).’ 2

Yes, Dr Unwin did not criticize, instead he was intrigued. Could this possibly be true? It went against everything he had been told about healthy eating, and weight loss, and T2 diabetes. Fat has twice the calories, per gram, as carbohydrates and suchlike. Eating fat, he believed, makes you fat, and then you develop diabetes, and heart disease.

Dr Unwin did more research, then he made the decision to work with patients, mainly those with diabetes, to see if a low carbohydrate diet could be beneficial. Lo and behold, it was … very beneficial. It was like a miracle cure.

In 2014 he published a paper on his results on a small number of patients.

‘Low carbohydrate diet to achieve weight loss and improve HbA1c in type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes: experience from one general practice.’

‘It was observed that a low carbohydrate diet achieved substantial weight loss in all patients and brought about normalisation of blood glucose control in 16 out of 18 patients. At the same time, plasma lipid profiles improved, and BP fell allowing discontinuation of antihypertensive therapy in some individuals…

Conclusions Based on our work so far, we can understand the reasons for the internet enthusiasm for a low carbohydrate diet; the majority of patients lose weight rapidly and fairly easily; predictably the HbA1c levels are not far behind. Cholesterol levels, liver enzymes and BP levels all improved. This approach is simple to implement and much appreciated by people with diabetes.’ 3

Now, he has published results of a much larger study, on nearly two hundred patients over a six-year period. It is called. ‘Insights from a general practice service evaluation supporting a lower carbohydrate diet in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and prediabetes’ Published in BMJ nutrition 4.

Here are the main findings, which I nicked directly from the press release:

  • 46% drug-free T2 diabetes remission
  • Significant improvements in weight, blood pressure and lipid profiles
  • 93% remission of prediabetes
  • £50,885 annual saving on the Norwood GP practice NHS diabetes drug budget
  • If every GP practice in England spent the same on drugs for diabetes per patient as Norwood the NHS could save £277 million!
  • Older patients can do as well as younger ones with a low carb approach.
  • The participants who started with the worst blood sugars saw the greatest improvements in diabetic control
  • Four individuals came off insulin altogether
  • Total weight loss for the 199 participants was 1.6 metric tons!

This paper will be attacked, of course. There are massive financial interests involved here. As stated, if every GP practice in the UK used the low carb approach, the NHS could save £277 million (~$350m) in drug costs. Scaled up to the US, with much higher drugs costs, one could be looking at around $2Bn/year. Around the world, who knows, but vast sums of money.

So, you can imagine the joy that this paper will be met with in pharmaceutical company boardrooms around the world. The words ‘lead’ and ‘balloon’, spring to mind. Equally the massive low-fat, high carb food manufacturers will be throwing their hands up in horror – ‘my bonus, my bonus… nooooo.’ You can take your low carb yoghurts and….

As for the rest of us. I can assure you that Dr David Unwin has only ever been interested in one thing. Working out how to help people lose weight and control their diabetes. He has achieved this.

Will his research now be taken up by the authorities around the world? Will we move away from promoting a high carbohydrate diet? You have to be joking. There is far too much money to be lost by companies who exert tight control over the world of medical research, and whose lobbyists swarm around the politicians in rich countries.

Which is a damn shame, because more than ever in this endless COVID19 pandemic, obesity represents a health crisis. This paper, and the tireless work by Dr David Unwin, clearly tells us what we need to do, now, urgently. His approach won’t work instantly, and it won’t work for everyone – nothing ever does. However, it represents hope. It could save hundreds and thousands of lives. Better than any vaccine?

Thank you, once again, Dr Unwin. A man who I think of as a friend. Your research should be shouted from the rooftops. I can only do my bit.

1: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/09/why-covid-19-more-deadly-people-obesity-even-if-theyre-young

2: https://www.rcgp.org.uk/clinical-and-research/resources/bright-ideas/working-on-weight-loss-with-type-ii-diabetic-patients-dr-david-unwin.aspx

3: https://www.practicaldiabetes.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2016/03/Low-carbohydrate-diet-to-achieve-weight-loss-and-improve-HbA1c-in-type-2-diabetes-and-pre-diabetes-experience-from-one-general-practice.pdf

4: https://nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/2020/11/02/bmjnph-2020-000072

November 3, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

New Lockdowns Announced in UK

By Samuel May | OffGuardian | November 1, 2020

So, during ‘Prime Minister’s statement on coronavirus, 31 October 2020’, the usual trio of Johnson, Whitty and Vallance ‘did their thing’ once again, and sold us a lie.

We were shown some graph projections, made by the same people who were wrong in all their previous graph projections and which lacked any context whatsoever (like, for instance, what did last autumn’s hospital admissions look like by comparison?).

Yet these graphs were nevertheless unanimously and alarmingly clear, apparently: We’re all terribly, terribly at risk from the RONA, don’t you know, and we need a further 4 weeks of lockdown.

Johnson said:

From Thursday until the start of December, you must stay at home.

Although initially sold as ‘time-limited’, Michael Gove has already announced this will be extended if their computer models happen to show the mythical ‘R’ rating hasn’t gone down far enough.

So, consider yourselves primed.

Johnson described this latest lockdown as “less prohibitive and less restrictive” than April/March, although even the most lay of laymen will be acutely aware by now of what the true repercussions of this lockdown will be.

This lockdown will further widen the rich/poor divide, further depress the UK economy by shutting down ‘non-essential’ businesses etc., further isolate the young, needy and vulnerable and further cheapen the lives of the very elderly people whose wellbeing has endlessly and hypocritically been used to justify this evil charade.

Johnson said:

And even if I could now double [hospital] capacity overnight – and obviously I am proud that we have massively increased capacity, we do have the Nightingales, we’ve got 13,000 more nurses now than last year, we have many more doctors – but it still would not be enough, because the virus is doubling faster than we could conceivably add capacity.

So you see, anything that could possibly have been done would never have been enough. They know this. That’s probably the only reason they didn’t massively boost the NHS during the quiet summer months, despite the fact they’ve been warning of a possible resurgence for ages. You aren’t being conned here. We need to be very clear on that point. Move along now.

Oh…. and the army will be on our streets this time, testing lots and lots of people. Won’t that be nice. Johnson stated (our emphasis):

“… over the next few days and weeks, we plan a steady but massive expansion in the deployment of these quick turnaround tests.

Applying them in an ever-growing number of situations

From helping women to have their partners with them in labour wards when they’re giving birth to testing whole towns and even whole cities

The army has been brought in to work on the logistics and the programme will begin in a matter of days.

Working with local communities, local government, public health directors and organisations of all kinds to help people discover whether or not they are infectious, and then immediately to get them to self-isolate and to stop the spread”

You may remember we warned this was looming back in early October, when MP and 77th Brigade reserve officer Tobias Ellwood stood up in Parliament to request greater military involvement. It seems he was listened to. Or, at least, he popped up to ask a convenient question and plug a narrative hole at an opportune time.

Throughout this Number Ten briefing, Johnson/Vallance/Whitty seemed a bit nonchalant this time around, as they condescended to inform the unwashed masses of their fate. Or perhaps they were overcompensating, for there was a certain tenseness about their eyes, as of someone placing a powerful mousetrap behind a wardrobe…

November 1, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

After the Virus: The World of 2025 – #PropagandaWatch

Corbett • 10/30/2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

What will the world look like in 2025? Don’t worry, you don’t have to think about the world you want and then work to bring it about. That’s silly! Just listen to the good Bilderbergers at Cognizant, who are more than happy to tell you about the new police state on steroids that is about to be erected to fight the invisible enemy of coronavirus . . . and how you can cash in on the opportunity!!!

Watch on Archive / BitChute / LBRY / Minds / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES
Episode 387 – Your Guide to The Great Reset

After the Virus: A Discussion Looking Back on the Next 5 Years (video)

After the Virus (whitepaper)

Episode 383 – COVID-911: From Homeland Security to Biosecurity

October 30, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Vaccines – Who Needs Them?

By David Macilwain | American Herald Tribune | October 28, 2020

It’s a serious question that few have asked, and there’s no clear answer. Up till this point in the Coronavirus play, discussion on vaccines has been limited to one perspective – how effective might they be, and how long before one is available. Thanks to the rigors of lock-downs and upending of society necessitated – we are told – by the need to avoid the virus and “save lives”, interest in a vaccine that might save us from this hell has been intense, not least amongst the shareholders of pharmaceutical companies vying for a share of the global market.

This massive financial interest, hardly denied even by those who claim philanthropic concerns are their real motivator, has nevertheless led to some perverse outcomes and corrupt manipulation. The suppression and distortion of the true worth of Hydroxychloroquine is the greatest crime amongst these, as its leading advocate – Professor Didier Raoult of Marseilles – continues to observe; a worth that has been demonstrated globally by those countries where it has been approved or prescribed.

It now appears almost beyond doubt that the campaign against the use of HCQ, driven by pharmaceutical companies and their agents in governments and institutions, is because of its efficacy in treating COVID 19 infections, and so taking away the market for both other drugs and for vaccines. Prof Raoult has made this claim – and allegation against the French government of serious negligence that has cost many lives – since April. But just last week the case has become a nationally significant conflict following the prohibition against Raoult’s Mediterranee Infection Institute on using Hydroxychloroquine/Azithromycin treatment for COVID patients.

Not only is this prohibition quite contrary to principles of care and the doctor-patient relationship, but Raoult’s record of success in treating patients with the protocol is undeniable, and proven by his results – out of nearly 9000 patients attending the Marseilles hospital, of which 5,800 were treated with the HCQ/AZM protocol, just 30 deaths were recorded. A regional health official and regional MP have now made official protests in support of Prof Raoult’s right to continue the treatment, as described in this interview as well as in a rather bad English translation.

Prof Raoult, who repeatedly notes that he cannot predict the future behaviour of the epidemic and the changes in the virus, but has unfailingly correctly forecast its progress and likely developments, has recently also made some highly pertinent observations on vaccines. Unlike many of those who are sceptical or opposed to vaccines, Prof Raoult’s reservations on a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 are based on purely scientific observations of the behaviour of this virus and the particular characteristics of the infection it causes. Of these the most important feature is in the vastly different susceptibility of different age groups, which may be seen as a fatal weakness in the virus that can be exploited to defeat it.

The ability of younger people to “suffer” SARS-2 infection unscathed, and often without any symptoms – immunity effectively – forms the basis of the “Great Barrington Declaration” – a proposal for the safe development of natural immunity amongst the younger part of the population while older and more vulnerable people are isolated and protected. Although most sections of the health fraternity and mainstream media persist in wilfully ignoring this feature, instead emphasising all the cases of young and healthy people suffering serious illness or “long-Covid”, the statistics are unambiguous and unchanging since the start of the pandemic.

While sidestepping the claims in some quarters that no-one has actually died of COVID, because 99% of deaths are of people with some other serious illness, it is an incontrovertible fact that those who die from or with the Virus are overwhelmingly very old – and the majority in their eighties. The proportion of younger people developing serious illness or dying may be higher in some countries – notably in the US – where those age groups normally have greater morbidity from the diseases of affluence and indolence – diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

Importantly however, and regardless of these varying conditions, the apparent immunity of children to SARS-CoV-2 infection is most striking, and another “weakness” of the virus that may well play a part in limiting its dangers. This is yet another area on which Prof Raoult has focused in the past, when looking for an explanation for the relative immunity to the virus in adults under 50. He considers that children act as reservoirs or carriers of respiratory viruses and so may encourage generalised latent immunity in their parents to related Coronaviruses.

And it is the existence of this natural resistance to the novel Coronavirus which has important implications for the use of a vaccine, and whether its use will be justified or advantageous for some sections of the population, or even contra-indicated. The latter possibility, raised recently in a conversation with Prof Raoult, comes about because of the extremely low mortality from COVID 19 amongst younger people – rated at around 10,000 times lower than in those in their mid 80s – the predominant group of those dying with or from COVID.

Considering this feature of the epidemiology, he concluded that for a vaccine to be safe for younger people, it must be shown to cause lower mortality than the untreated viral infection. Clearly this applies to all age groups and all vaccines, if preventing deaths is their main function. And it is an ever more important consideration with many different types of vaccine now being developed and trialled, and with the possibility of unusual or unpredicted side effects.

Raoult concludes that if a vaccine is to be considered suitable for all, and including younger adults with a minimal chance of serious disease or death, then it must be safety tested on tens or hundreds of thousands of people, which is way beyond the limits currently imposed on potential vaccines thanks to the relative urgency and speed of their development. It is an exquisite irony that the prohibition of the literally life-saving drug Hydroxychloroquine has been based on claims of serious but extremely rare side-effects.

So what if the vaccine is only given to those at greater risk of death from SARS-2 infection, where the danger of vaccine side-effects is outweighed by the life-saving benefits? This may seem sensible, and is rather the practice with current flu vaccines, available free to the over 70s – but here a different factor comes into play. Vaccines mostly depend on the body to produce an immune response that will combat a subsequent viral infection, but this immune response gets weaker as you age. Consequently the benefits of vaccination are far less for older people, and marginal for those over 80 and with weakened systems – the very ones most likely to die following viral infection.

While this relative ineffectiveness of vaccines for the old gets little attention, it is often enough said that a vaccine may only be 50 – 60% effective, as if to avoid raising peoples’ expectations, but this is hardly a minor point. Who would drive a car whose brakes couldn’t always be relied upon, even if they knew it?

So I repeat the question – who actually needs a vaccine to protect them from contracting this not very dangerous respiratory virus? We can rule out anyone under the age of 30, whose chance of dying as a result of CV19 infection is less than 1 in 20,000. For those under 50 this chance may be around 1 in 5000, so a vaccine showing no deaths amongst 10,000 volunteers will have a marginal benefit for this group. In fact the only real benefit of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 might be amongst those in their sixties and seventies, particularly if they have other serious health issues, or are more exposed to infection – as is the case for older health-care workers.

But there is another factor that comes into play here. In order to protect the most vulnerable sectors of the population from infection, a significant percentage of the whole population must be made immune, either from vaccination or from their natural immune reaction to infection. The current path being pursued is to prevent infection and natural immunity developing, so such levels of herd immunity can only be achieved by mass vaccination, subjecting half the population to unnecessary dangers from vaccine side effects.

It would seem hard to make a sound scientific case for such a policy, or an economic one – the cost of vaccinating millions or billions of people around the world is barely calculable. But what is a cost to governments and the taxpayers who support them is a benefit to the pharmaceutical industry and private health industry, and it appears as though they will be driving policy to suit their interests.

There is one last aspect to this question, which only further emphasises the point; the significantly lower death rate associated with the currently circulating strains of the virus. Whether the escalation in positive-testing case numbers is partly due to oversensitive tests, or previously unaccounted asymptomatic cases, associated deaths have barely risen, and remain below 1% of total infections – roughly one tenth of the mortality rate during the “first wave” in Europe.

If science were allowed to prevail, then it would follow the prescriptions of the Great Barrington Declaration, abandoning the great vaccination project and allowing “nature to take her course”. But clearly she will not be allowed to, in a way epitomised by the Indian Government’s announcement last week that all citizens will be vaccinated. This was accompanied by news that India’s rapidly climbing infection rate was levelling off – most probably because herd immunity levels are now being reached.

October 29, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Newly Increased Coronavirus Crackdowns in Europe, a Preview of What Joe Biden Wants for All of America

Biden campaign rally, 27 October
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | October 28, 2020

Across Europe, supposedly in reaction to rises in the numbers of coronavirus cases, many national governments are imposing increased crackdowns that severely restrict the exercise of liberty. These coronavirus cases are in large part derived from testing that produces many false positives and that is often conducted on relatively young and healthy people who have very little risk of dying or even becoming seriously sick from a coronavirus infection.

Of course, the European politicians exerting their newly increased power say “the science” supports their tyrannical actions. And they will tend to give platforms to doctors and other scientists who back up those claims while ignoring or deriding the many doctors and other scientists who disagree.

If Joe Biden were president of the United States now, we can expect he would be following the course of these European power grabbers. The only likely reasons for restraint, aside from the potential of overwhelming popular revolt, would be if Biden had already implemented and maintained a countrywide crackdown of such high degree that he thought he could not feasibly increase it further or if congressional opposition or court orders managed to stop him.

In an August interview with David Muir at ABC, Muir asked Biden if Biden would shut down the country if “the scientists” say to do so because of coronavirus. Biden replied, “I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists.” Of course, the scientists Biden is referring to are people like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx who have helped stir up and maintain overblown fear of coronavirus and support for state and local crackdowns while members of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force. Biden is not referring to people like Scott Atlas, a more recently added coronavirus advisor of Trump, who argues that much of the government action taken in the name of countering coronavirus cause more harm than good.

Biden also reiterated in the ABC interview his commitment to imposing a national mask mandate.

Keep in mind that Biden, in the ABC interview, is talking about both what he would do at the time of the interview and what he would do as president after he takes office on January 20 — about three months from now, five months after the interview, and ten months after crackdowns began to be imposed across America. He seems content to impose extraordinary mandates on Americans for a long time. In large part this appears to be the case because Biden places little or no value on the average American’s freedom. Biden, in the ABC interview, provides this response to people who say a mask mandate “impacts on their freedom”:

Come on. Give me a break. It’s about saving lives.

Biden disregards freedom. He disregards science as well given that the evidence indicates wearing masks does not prevent coronavirus infection and does damage health.

The beginning portion of the Thursday presidential debate was dedicated to discussion by Biden and President Donald Trump regarding coronavirus policy. The exchange presented a sharp contrast in views related to coronavirus policy. Biden described the upcoming situation with coronavirus in America by saying “we’re about to go into a dark winter,” a hyperbolic description supporting his advocacy for imposing draconian countrywide mandates. If he wins, Biden will take office during that winter. In contrast, Trump said in the debate “no we’re not gonna shut down.” In regard to crackdowns continuing on local and state levels, Trump stated, “we have to open our country.” Trump further stated that “the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself, and that’s what’s happening.” Also, unlike Biden, Trump has been very sparing in his wearing of masks and has never proposed a national mandate.

In October, European nations have imposed and expanded draconian mandates in the name of countering coronavirus. Meanwhile, some American states and local governments have eased up on coronavirus mandates while others have increased them. Should Biden become president in January, expect him to act to make the coronavirus crackdown in America go countrywide and go big.

Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute.

October 28, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Why So Gullible About Government in the Face of Covid-19?

By Donald J. Boudreaux | American Institute for Economic Research | October 27, 2020

At my blog, Café Hayek, I recently posted several entries in opposition to the Covid-19 lockdowns specifically, and, more generally, to Covid-caused hysteria. These posts sparked negative reaction in the comments section and in my email box. This negative reaction is, I think, unwarranted.

Unwarranted Faith

Among the most frustrating features of the pro-lockdown argument is the blind faith that those who make it place in the politicians who issue the orders and oversee the enforcement. This frustration is hyper-charged when such faith is displayed by classical liberals and libertarians, who normally understand that politicians and their hirelings have neither the knowledge nor the incentives to be trusted with much power. Yet in the face of Covid, executive-branch government officials are assumed somehow to become sufficiently informed and trustworthy to exercise the unbounded discretionary power – that is, the arbitrary power – required to prohibit vast swathes of normal human interaction ranging from the commercial through the educational to the personal (such as prohibiting family gatherings above a certain size).

Why this faith? The proffered answer, of course, is that Covid-19 is unusually dangerous and, therefore, we have no choice but to put faith in government officials. This answer is bizarre, for it insists that we must now trust with unprecedented power people who regularly act in ways that prove them to be unworthy to hold lesser amounts of power. My head explodes….

Moving on, and without pausing to explore just what is meant here by “unusually,” let’s grant that Covid-19 is indeed unusually dangerous. But also unusually dangerous is arbitrary government power. Is it unreasonable for those of us who fear this power to require that proponents of lockdowns meet a higher standard of persuasion before we accede to the exercise of such power? Given that the initial spark for the lockdowns, at least in the United Kingdom and the United States, was Neil Ferguson’s suspect and widely criticized Imperial Model – a model, recall, offered by a man with an awful record of dramatically exaggerating the likely mortality rates of diseases – is it unreasonable to demand that much stronger evidence be offered before we turn silent as governments continue massively to interrupt normal life?

If you’re tempted to answer these questions in the affirmative, recognize that there’s at least one important difference between pathogens and power – a difference that should be, but isn’t, taken into consideration by pro-lockdowners. The difference is this: Population immunity, either through a pathogen’s natural spread or through a vaccine, will at some point significantly reduce that pathogen’s danger; in contrast, for protection against government power there is no population immunity or vaccine. When such power expands, the ratchet effect documented by Robert Higgs ensures that that power remains more elevated and widespread than before.

Unlike pathogens, government power continues to nourish itself as it grows into an ever-greater danger. Quaking at the very thought of Covid while discounting the danger that lurks in the immense expansions of government power done in the name of fighting Covid is wholly unreasonable.

Where’s the Perspective?

Several of Café Hayek’s commenters and my email correspondents push back against anti-lockdown arguments by observing that ordinary people support lockdowns because they don’t wish to die, to become severely ill, or to have their loved ones stricken with Covid. This observation is accurate – as is an accompanying observation that Covid is spread from person to person. But as an argument for lockdowns it’s without merit, for it begs several questions.

How many lives are actually saved, on net, by the lockdowns? Obviously, the Covid-induced expansions of government power are not justified if the net number of lives saved is small. And remember, against the lives saved by lockdowns must be counted the lives lost because of the lockdowns – lives lost to suicide, to the reduced health and safety that comes from lower income, and from the failure to diagnose and treat non-Covid illnesses.

Yet those who insist that the desire not to be killed by Covid justifies the lockdowns largely ignore these questions and trade-offs. It would be as if a sincerely expressed desire not to be killed as a pedestrian by an automobile were taken as justification to prohibit automobiles. Such a prohibition would result in approximately 6,000 fewer pedestrians in America being killed annually by automobiles – itself alone an undeniably happy result. Yet would such a prohibition be justified by this objective fact? Would your answer change if someone with a superficial familiarity with economics declares that the danger posed to pedestrians by automobile traffic is a “negative externality”?

And whose lives are being saved by the lockdowns and for how long? I’m baffled by the ongoing failure in the public discussion to recognize that Covid kills mostly very old or sick people, and is practically of no danger to people under the age of 50. This reality alone should utterly discredit the case for locking down entire economies and life events. (Note, by the way, that I write this essay as a 62-year-old.) Not only does Covid pose no real – and much less no unusual – danger to most people, the group of persons to whom Covid does pose an unusual danger is easily identified.

As the Great Barrington Declaration sensibly argues, preventive efforts should be focused on helping this (relatively small) group of vulnerable persons. Keeping them isolated or otherwise protected from the coronavirus simply does not require the vast majority of the population to be locked down, “socially distanced” from each other, or saddled with other restrictions. In fact, as the Declaration’s authors note, by delaying population immunity, lockdowns likely increase the long-term threat to old and sick people.

Public Panic

It’s no good response to note that the general public is panicked by Covid. This panic is indeed real. It explains why the public isn’t more resistant to the lockdowns. But this panic does not justify the lockdowns.

Consider: The risk in America of being killed by terrorism is, as Bryan Caplan describes it, “microscopic.” Between 1970 and 2012 the chance that an American would, in any one year, be done in by terrorism was 1 in 4 million – much less than half the chance of being killed by a home appliance. Yet the 9/11-sparked panic over terrorism has resulted in a permanent increase in efforts to protect Americans from this virtual non-threat.

How much prosperity – including increased health and safety – are we failing to produce because we now waste billions of dollars worth of resources on protection from this minuscule risk? Too much.

And don’t forget that government’s response to 9/11 also includes America’s seemingly permanent war stance in the Middle East and a scaling up of government’s violation of our privacy. How much of our freedom has been permanently lost because of excessive fear of terrorism? Much too much.

Rather than accept as given the public’s irrational fear of terrorism, the far better course is to stop stoking this fear and, instead, to calm it by broadcasting accurate information about terrorism’s relative risks. (Aren’t we constantly told that one of the core functions of government is to produce and spread accurate information as a “public good?”) The spread of better information would prompt the public to demand better policies.

The same must be said about Covid. Tamping down the Covid hysteria by making available accurate information about this disease is what well-informed and public-spirited governments would do. Yet such governments are largely mythical. Real-world governments behave quite differently. Most governments, in the U.S. and elsewhere, chose – and continue to choose – a course precisely the opposite of what ‘good’ governments would choose. The reason, alas, isn’t mysterious: As H.L. Mencken observed, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Covid-19 is the perfect hobgoblin. And while its dangers are not imaginary, their degree and impact certainly are. Governments’ failure to ensure that their citizens are accurately informed about Covid is itself sufficient reason to distrust governments with the powers they’ve seized over the course of this hellish year.

Donald J. Boudreaux is a senior fellow with American Institute for Economic Research and with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Mercatus Center Board Member; and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University.

October 28, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Spain: Study Shows 80% COVID Patients Deficient in Vitamin D

21st Century Wire | October 28, 2020

A new study has all but confirmed the link between COVID sufferers and Vitamin D deficiency. This latest study lends additional support to the argument that cheap therapeutics are already readily available to the public – a key point which further demolishes the US, UK government and Big Pharma narrative that “only a vaccine” can save the population from a rapidly waning ‘novel’ coronavirus which is still being used by politicians and the World Economic Forum to justify the continuation of highly damaging lockdown policies.

Results of new research done by the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital in Spain shows that a large number of COVID-19 patients – 82% of them, were found to have low levels of vitamin D, according to this new peer reviewed study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Evidence seems to suggest that out of the 216 tested, more men were affected by this condition than women.

Conversely, a control group showed that only 47% of people who didn’t have the virus were Vitamin D deficient.

Vitamin D is a hormone produced in the kidneys which aids in the regulation of calcium in the bloodstream.

According to researchers, one possible mechanism for the high risk to serious illness in low Vitamin D sufferers could be a clear increase in serum levels of inflammatory markers like D-dimer and ferritin used by the body to fight off an infection.

One specific note: researchers did not find a clear association with the levels of vitamin D and the severity of COVID, or a need to be sent to intensive care, or placed on a ventilator, or death.

According to researcher Dr Jose Hernandez, from the University of Cantabria, “One approach is to identify and treat vitamin D deficiency, especially in high-risk individuals such as the elderly, patients with comorbidities, and nursing home residents, who are the main target population for the COVID-19.”

Regarding the issue of treatment, Dr Hernandez added that, “Vitamin D treatment should be recommended in COVID-19 patients with low levels of vitamin D circulating in the blood since this approach might have beneficial effects in both the musculoskeletal and the immune system.”

October 28, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Nine Covid Facts: A Pandemic of Fearmongering and Ignorance

By Jeff Harris | Ron Paul Institute | October 28, 2020

Ever since the alleged pandemic erupted this past March the mainstream media has spewed a non-stop stream of misinformation that appears to be laser focused on generating maximum fear among the citizenry. But the facts and the science simply don’t support the grave picture painted of a deadly virus sweeping the land.

Yes we do have a pandemic, but it’ a pandemic of ginned up pseudo-science masquerading as unbiased fact. Here are nine facts backed up with data, in many cases from the CDC itself that paints a very different picture from the fear and dread being relentlessly drummed into the brains of unsuspecting citizens.

1) The PCR test is practically useless

According to an article in the New York Times August 29th 2020 testing for the Covid-19 virus using the popular PCR method results in up to 90% of those tested showing positive results that are grossly misleading.

Officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada compiled testing data that revealed the PCR test can NOT determine the amount of virus in a sample. (viral load) The amount of virus in up to 90% of positive results turned out to be so miniscule that the patient was asymptomatic and posed no threat to others. So the positive Covid-19 tests are virtually meaningless.

2) A positive test is NOT a CASE

For some reason every positive Covid-19 test is immediately designated a CASE. As we saw in #1 above up to 90% of positive Covid-19 tests result in miniscule amounts of virus that do not sicken the subject. Historically only patients who demonstrated actual symptoms of an illness were considered a case. Publishing positive test results as “CASES” is grossly misleading and needlessly alarming.

3) The Centers for Disease Control dramatically lowered the Covid-19 Death Count

On August 30th the CDC released new data that showed only 6% of the deaths previously attributed to Covid-19 were due exclusively to the virus. The vast majority, 94%, may have had exposure to Covid-19 but also had preexisting illnesses like heart disease, obesity, hypertension, cancer and various respiratory illnesses. While they died with Covid-19 they did NOT die exclusively from Covid-19.

4) CDC reports Covid-19 Survival Rate over 99% 

The CDC updated their “Current Best Estimate” for Covid-19 survival on September 10th showing that over 99% of people exposed to the virus survived. Another way to say this is that less than 1% of the exposures are potentially life threatening. According to the CDC the vast majority of deaths attributed to Covid-19 were concentrated in the population over age 70, close to normal life expectancy.

5) CDC reveals 85% of Positive Covid cases wore face masks Always or Often 

In September of 2020 the CDC released the results of a study conducted in July where they discovered that 85% of the positive Covid test subjects reported wearing a cloth face mask always or often for two weeks prior to testing positive. The majority, 71% of the test subjects reported always wearing a cloth face mask and 14% reported often wearing a cloth face mask. The only rational conclusion from this study is that cloth face masks offer little if any protection from Covid-19 infection.

6) There are inexpensive, proven therapies for Covid-19

Harvey Risch, MD, PhD heads the Yale University School of Epidemiology. He authored “The Key to Defeating Covid-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It” which was published in Newsweek Magazine July 23rd, 2020. Dr. Risch documents the proven effectiveness of treating patients diagnosed with Covid-19 using a combination of Hydroxychloroquine, an antibiotic like azithromycin and the nutritional supplement zinc. Medical Doctors across the globe have reported very positive results using this protocol particularly for early stage Covid patients.

7) The US Death Rate is NOT spiking

If Covid-19 was the lethal killer it’s made out to be one would reasonably expect to see a significant spike in the number of deaths reported. But that hasn’t happened. According to the CDC as of early May 2020 the total number of deaths in the US was 944,251 from January 1 – April 30th. This is actually slightly lower than the number of deaths during the same period in 2017 when 946,067 total deaths were reported.

8) Most Covid-19 Deaths Occur at the End of a normal Lifespan

According to the CDC as of 2017 US males can expect a normal lifespan of 76.1 years and females 81.1 years. A little over 80% of the suspected Covid-19 deaths have occurred in people over age 65. According to a June 28th New York Post article almost half of all Covid suspected deaths have occurred in Nursing Homes which predominately house people with preexisting health conditions and close to or past their normal life expectancy.

9) CDC Data Shows Minimal Covid Risk to Children and Young Adults

The CDC reported in their September 10th update that it’s estimated Infection Mortality Rate (IFR) for children age 0-19 was so low that 99.97% of those infected with the virus survived. For 20-49 year-olds the survival rate was almost as good at 99.98%. Even those 70 years-old and older had a survival rate of 94.6%. To put this in perspective the CDC data suggest that a child or young adult up to age 19 has a greater chance of death from some type of accident than they do from Covid-19.

Taken together it should be obvious that Covid-19 is pretty similar to typical flu viruses that sicken some people annually. The vast majority are able to successfully fight off the virus with their body’s natural immune system. Common sense precautions should be taken, particularly by those over age 65 that suffer from preexisting medical conditions.

The gross over reaction by government leaders to this illness is causing much more distress, physical, emotional and financial, than the virus ever could on its own. The bottom line is there is NO pandemic, just a typical flu season that has been wildly blown out of proportion by 24/7 media propaganda and enabled by the masses paralyzed by irrational fear.

State and local governments in particular have ignored the rights of the people and have instituted outrageous attacks on freedom and liberty that was bought and paid for by the blood and sacrifice of our forefathers.

Slowly the people are recognizing the great fraud perpetrated on them by bureaucrats and elected officials who have sworn to uphold rights and freedoms as spelled out in the US Constitution. The time has come to hold these criminals accountable by utilizing the legal system to bring them to justice.

Either we act now to preserve freedom and liberty for our children and future generations yet unborn, or we meekly submit to tyrants who crave more power and control. I will not comply!

October 28, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Defining Despotism Down

By James Bovard | American Institute for Economic Research | October 27, 2020

The simultaneous defining down of both democracy and despotism is 2020’s darkest legacy. Voters are recognizing that their ballots merely choose elective dictators who can exempt themselves from the Constitution simply by pronouncing the word “emergency.” At the same time, despotism is being redefined to signify government failing to force people to do the right thing.

Hundreds of millions of Americans were locked in their homes via governors’ shutdown orders earlier this year. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has said he may decree a national lockdown if Covid infection numbers rise. More than 10 million jobs have been lost thanks to the shutdown orders and countless misery has been imposed on scores of millions of people unnecessarily isolated from friends and family.

New York, the state hit worst by Covid, had one of the earliest and strictest lockdowns in the nation. After Gov. Andrew Cuomo swayed the legislature to give him “authorization of absolute power,” as the New Yorker declared, he issued scores of decrees, including one compelling nursing homes to admit Covid-infected patients and permitting Covid-infected staffers to keep working at those homes. More than 10,000 New York nursing home patients died of Covid. In June, Cuomo said the nursing homes deaths occurred “because the staff brought in the infection,”

A New Yorker profile explained that Cuomo and his aides saw the battle over Covid policy as “between people who believe government can be a force for good and those who think otherwise.” For many liberals and much of the nation’s media, placing people under house arrest, padlocking schools, and bankrupting business vindicated government as “a force for good.”

But the lockdowns failed to prevent almost nine million Americans from testing positive for Covid (the actual number of cases may be ten times higher, according to the Centers for Disease Control). As AIER’s Jeffrey Tucker quipped, “Mitigating disease through compulsory lockdowns is like cleaning your house by bombing it.” The World Health Organization’s envoy for Covid-19, David Nabarro, warned that “lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.” Nabarro also warned that “we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year” or “at least a doubling of child malnutrition.”

Lockdowns that were initially justified to “flatten the curve” have been perpetuated on increasingly ludicrous pretexts:

  • California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently decreed that Covid restrictions would be perpetuated in California counties based on voter turnout, alcohol availability, and other non-health factors. California assemblyman Kevin Kiley groused, “An entire county can be kept shut down because certain areas are judged to be lacking in ‘equity,’ even if the whole county has relatively few cases of Covid.”
  • In Washington, D.C., the local government is perpetuating private and public school shutdowns and other restrictions as long based on a newly-decreed standard: “a requirement that more than 60 percent of new cases be closely connected to other known cases.” The city currently can connect less than 10% of cases, so this Veto on Normalcy can last forever – or at least as long as devotees pledge their devotion to (mindless) “data and science.” D.C. Covid mania is so extreme that worshippers at the Basilica at Catholic University have been prohibited from performing the “stations of the cross” inside the church, instead being ordered to sit in a pew.

The contract between citizens and the government in this nation hinges on elected politicians obeying the Constitution. After Covid crackdowns obliterated constitutional rights, courts slammed run-a-mok rulers:

  • Federal judge William Stickman IV last month condemned Pennsylvania’s Covid restrictions: “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.”
  • The Michigan Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had extended a “state of emergency” far beyond what an unconstitutional state law allowed.
  • Federal judge Daniel Domenico last week ruled that some of Colorado’s Covid restrictions violated religious freedom: “The Constitution does not allow the State to tell a congregation how large it can be when comparable secular gatherings are not so limited, or to tell a congregation that its reason for wishing to remove facial coverings is less important than a restaurant’s or spa’s.”
  • In May, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a state official’s stay-at-home order as “unlawful, invalid, and unenforceable.”

The U.S. Department of Justice declared earlier this year: “There is no pandemic exclusion … to the fundamental liberties the Constitution safeguards.” Attorney General William Barr declared last month that imposing “a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. It’s — you know, other than slavery… this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

But most of the media cheered almost every arbitrary restriction imposed by any government official in the name of fighting Covid. University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner fretted in the Washington Post that “judicial opposition to the lockdown orders is not just about religious liberty. It’s also, and perhaps really, about the role of government in American life.” And any limit on government power is equivalent to national suicide, apparently. A New York democratic legislator told the New Yorker that Gov. Cuomo is “inclined towards tyranny. But in a crisis that’s what people want.” The media’s valorization of Cuomo helped make his new book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, a bestseller. Tyranny is comforting to some people regardless of how much havoc and pointless suffering tyrants inflict.

For many liberals, mandatory masks have become the new version of the Emancipation Proclamation. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, presidential candidate Joe Biden declared, “We’ll have a national mandate to wear a mask — not as a burden but as a patriotic duty to protect one another.” When asked if he will force everyone to wear a mask, Biden replied, “This isn’t about freedom, it’s about freedom for your, your neighbors.” Biden also declared, “Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months, at a minimum.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in July that a federal mask mandate would be “authoritarian” but endorsed a national mask decree last week.

The ultimate symbol of maskless tyranny became Trump’s White House balcony appearance, when he removed his mask and muttered a few words after exiting Walter Reed Hospital. Even though no one was standing close by, Trump was widely compared to Mussolini – as if not wearing a mask was the ultimate betrayal of the American people.

Rather than campaigning against Trump’s abuses of power, Biden and the Democrats are condemning Trump for not seizing far more power to pretend to keep everyone safe from everything. During the first years of the War on Terror, some servile Republicans cheered on Bush administration travesties with the throwaway line: “You don’t have any constitutional rights if you’re dead.” Nowadays, many frightened Americans seem ready to support perpetual lockdowns based on the axiom: “You don’t have any rights if anyone tests positive for Covid-19.” A virus with a 99.9% survival rate has spawned a 100% presumption in favor of despotism.

The failure of iron fist policies should be the storyline of the 2020 election but instead Biden and much of the media want to double down on repression. Can the votes that are cast in the coming week close the authoritarian Pandora’s Boxes that have opened across the nation? Or will conniving invocations of “data and science” suffice to blight Americans’ rights and liberties in perpetuity?

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty.

October 28, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

The Most Dangerous Disease in the World

AwakenWithJP | October 27, 2020

In this video, learn all about the most dangerous disease in the world, intelligence. You’ll understand what you need to do to help slow the spread of this disease. If we all work together and follow the proper social guidelines, we can rid the world of intelligence once and for all.

October 28, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

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