New York gun control law requires social media checks
Samizdat | July 2, 2022
New York has adopted a sweeping gun control law aiming to ban firearms from a number of “sensitive areas,” including Times Square, also requiring social media checks for gun permit applicants to ensure their “character and conduct.”
The Democrat-sponsored bill advanced through the New York legislature during a special session on Friday, with Governor Kathy Hochul signing it soon after.
“This to me is the embodiment of what it means to be an American,” Hochul said of the law soon after it passed the state Senate, adding she would sign it “in honor of our Fourth of July weekend.”
The law bans guns from a long list of “sensitive areas” around the Empire State, such as popular tourist sites in New York City, as well as schools, libraries, universities, government buildings, playgrounds and parks, public transit and stadiums. Residents will also no longer be allowed to carry firearms into private businesses unless the owners post clear signage stating it is permitted.
A more controversial measure in the bill requires those looking to obtain a gun permit to send the government “a list of former and current social media accounts… from the past three years” in order to confirm the “applicant’s character and conduct.” Additionally, they will be made to submit at least four “character references” who can “attest to the applicant’s good moral character.”
The bill was passed during a special legislative session called after the US Supreme Court shot down a century-old gun control law in New York last week. While the provision forced permit-seekers to demonstrate that they required a gun for self-defense, the court concluded that it violated the 14th Amendment “by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.”
Though Democratic supporters have said it will help “make New Yorkers safe,” the new legislation has faced intense criticism from Republicans and gun advocates, with the executive director of the New York State Firearms Association, Aaron Dorr, blasting it as “the kind of bill that the Gestapo would be proud of.”
“This will never survive a court challenge,” he added.
GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin – who won the party’s nomination for an upcoming governor’s race earlier this week – was also highly critical, arguing the law would only make residents less safe.
“Only under one party Democrat rule can criminals run amuck armed with illegal guns, while law abiding New Yorkers are stripped of their right to safely and securely carry a firearm solely for self-defense,” Zeldin said.
Debate over gun control has been rekindled by a spate of mass shootings in recent months – including a rampage in Buffalo, New York which left 10 dead in May – prompting new legislation across a number of states and on the national level. Late last week, President Joe Biden signed a major bipartisan gun bill into law, aiming to limit access to firearms from those considered dangerous, the most significant legislation of its kind to clear Congress in nearly 30 years.
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal Challenging New York’s Removal of Religious Exemption for Schoolchildren
By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | May 26, 2022
The U.S. Supreme Court this week decided not to take up an appeal by parents seeking to challenge New York lawmakers’ 2019 removal of the religious exemption to vaccination requirements for schoolchildren.
The court’s May 23 order announcing its decision not to hear arguments in the case F.F. v. New York allows a lower court decision to stand. The lower court concluded the parents’ arguments lacked merit and the state was not targeting religion when it eliminated the religious exemption.
“Today we learned that the U.S Supreme Court will not hear the religious repeal case we have argued for the last almost three years,” lead attorney Michael Sussman told Autism Action Network (AAN).
Sussman said in an AAN email to members:
“As those who have followed the case know, the legislature in NY repealed the 50-year-old religious exemption for students in June 2019. It did so with hateful rhetoric accusing religious people of being fraudsters.
“I believe this violated the first amendment which this court explicitly has held does not suffer any state action smitten with religious intolerance. I had expected this court to reaffirm this principle, but four justices did not vote to hear our case.
“So, we have lost. The only hope now is in the state legislature and hope is hard to find there.”
Every year, the Supreme Court receives about 10,000 petitions for certiorari but hears only about 80 of them. If the case pertains to state law, or is comprised of parties from only one state, the chance that the Supreme Court will hear the appeal is small.
The lawsuit originated after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo on June 13, 2019, signed into law a bill that repealed the religious vaccine exemption for children whose parents or guardians hold genuine religious beliefs that do not permit the child to receive vaccinations.
The state law applies to students under 18 in both public and private schools and prohibits unvaccinated children from attending school or daycare in the state unless they have a medical exemption.
“The science is crystal clear: Vaccines are safe, effective and the best way to keep our children safe,” Cuomo said after signing the bill. “While I understand and respect freedom of religion, our first job is to protect public health.”
The appeal stemmed from a lawsuit filed on July 10, 2019, by attorneys Sussman and Children’s Health Defense chairman and chief legal counsel Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on behalf of 55 families in the New York State Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the legislature’s repeal of the religious exemption to vaccination.
The families who brought the case included those from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths. They argued the repeal of the exemption violated their First Amendment rights, exhibited hostility toward religion and breached protections under the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, among other issues.
The families claimed the policy forced them to either violate their beliefs or homeschool their children.
“In lobbying for its passage, numerous legislators publicly mocked and ridiculed those seeking religious exemptions for their children, and the legislature left intact a medical exemption,” the parents’ brief stated.
“There is no dispute the repeal [of the religious exemption] has put tens of thousands of students to the Hobson’s choice of violating their sincerely held religious beliefs or being denied the right to attend any manner of in-person schooling.”
Sussman said there was ample evidence leading up to the passing of the bill that state legislators had shown open hospitality toward faith and people of faith.
“Comments of leaders of the New York legislature spoke of profound religious intolerance, which motivated the repeal of the religious exemptions,” Sussman told AAN.
For example, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins was quoted in a newspaper referring to the repeal by saying, “We have chosen science over rhetoric.”
Assembly sponsor Jeffrey Dinowitz said in a television interview, “There is nothing, nothing in the Jewish religion, in the Christian religion, in the Muslim religion … that suggests that you can’t get vaccinated. It is just utter garbage.”
State Sen. Brad Hoylman, Senate sponsor, deprecated those who hold religious exemptions, stating, “Let’s face it. Non-medical exemptions are essentially religious loopholes, where people often pay for a consultant to try to worm their way out of public health requirements that the rest of us are following.”
In an editorial, State Sen. James Skoufis referred to the “so-called ‘religious exemption,’” writing, “The time is now to end the state’s nonsensical and dangerous religious exemption.”
Skoufis added, “We’ve already wasted too much time debating this issue.”
Skoufis failed to mention that neither the Senate nor the Assembly convened even a single hearing on the topic.
“Short of some cataclysmic political upheaval, there is no future for ‘religious exemption’ in New York,” John Gilmore, executive director of AAN, said in an email.
But, he said, “that does not mean there is no hope that the power of the state to make vaccinations mandatory for our children and adults cannot be taken away from our overlords in Albany.”
Several other states prohibit K-12 schools from granting religious exemptions to required vaccinations for schoolchildren, including California, Mississippi, Connecticut, West Virginia and Maine.
NY State Dept. of Health Still Can’t Provide Any Proof that Vaccinated Children are Healthier than Unvaccinated
Informed Consent Action Network | December 29, 2021
Last month, yet another letter had to be sent to the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) and the New York State Education Department (NYSED) calling out their failure to provide any proof to dispute extremely important and revealing data reflecting that unvaccinated children have far better health outcomes than vaccinated children.
Soon after that letter was sent, a new Acting Commissioner of NYSDOH was appointed and so a letter was also sent to Dr. Mary Bassett, welcoming her to her new role and asking that she provide proof disputing these findings.
As explained to Dr. Bassett through the historical correspondence detailing the issue, on May 21, 2021, the attorneys that regularly represent ICAN sent a demand letter on behalf of a group comprising all the families of unvaccinated children in four contiguous school districts in New York. The demand explained that there is an abundance of evidence to support that unvaccinated children have better health outcomes than vaccinated children and shared the following results for the children in the four school districts:
Although not shocking to ICAN, these results should elicit a reaction from and a response by public health authorities and an education department which mandates vaccines. Instead, NYSED chose to completely ignore these findings and sent an inadequate, half-page response almost a full month later.
On August 11, 2021, a response letter was sent to NYSDOH pointing out the glaring omission from the NYSDOH’s response of even a shred of evidence to support that the growing rate and list of chronic diseases and disabilities affecting children are not caused by vaccination. NYSDOH was therefore warned that, absent receipt of this proof, the attorneys have been directed to commence an action challenging the school immunization requirements for kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Still no proof has been provided by the NYSDOH.
One must continue to wonder whether there is any data that could be submitted to these public health agencies that will change their unwavering belief in and allegiance to vaccines. And aren’t they troubled by the fact that they cannot produce any evidence to support their claims? Let’s see if the new Acting Commissioner provides any better response than her predecessor.
The Unvaxxed May Soon Be Shipped to Quarantine Camps
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | December 30, 2021
According to President Biden, “a winter of death” awaits anyone who rejects the experimental COVID jab which, by the way, has been consistently shown to do far more harm than good.
A December 16, 2021, White House statement reads: “For the unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death. For themselves, their family and the hospital they’ll soon overwhelm.” That exact sentence was reiterated the next day by COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients during a virtual press conference.
Backlash Over Biden’s Callousness
As reported by MSN’s Claire Goforth,1 the “prediction” didn’t go over well with the public. “Most people hate it. They feel it’s callous and cruel,” Goforth said, quoting a number of Twitter responses, including one from John D. Davidson:
“If you wanted to make half the country hate the administration and resist its edicts and advice, it would be hard to come up with a better strategy than this.”
A Twitter user by the name Martyr Made noted, “The aggressive Us/Them language in this White House message is insane.”2 Olivia Nuzzi, a Washington, D.C., reporter for New York Magazine tweeted, “Who is this for? Unvaccinated Americans are not going to be persuaded by messaging like this.”3
White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain defended Biden saying “we have a duty to warn people what they are facing if unvaccinated.”4 But from my perspective, the rub is that they continue to pretend that lies are truth and truth is lies. Everything is upside-down, and many are rejecting this “winter of woe” message for the simple fact that they know the opposite is true.
If we are to go by actual science and data, the warning Biden issued should have gone out to the vaccinated, because everything points to the double and triple jabbed being at increased risk for infection, especially with the Omicron variant.
One reason for this is because the COVID jab reprograms your innate and adaptive immune systems, causing immune depletion.5 Data also show that the more heavily “vaccinated” a population is, the higher the case rate gets.6 And even this fails to account for the massive increase risk of dying from the jab or becoming permanently disabled, as many jabbed millions have already suffered.
Former WHO Adviser Tells Vaccinated to Quarantine Over Winter
Back in August 2021, the U.K. Column interviewed professor Christian Perronne, a French infectious disease expert, long-time vaccine policy chief and former vice president of the World Health Organization’s European Advisory Group, who issued the opposite — and likely far more accurate — warning:7
“Vaccinated people are at risk of the new variants … It’s been proven in different countries, so vaccinated people should be put in quarantine and should be isolated from society. Unvaccinated people are not dangerous; vaccinated people are dangerous to others.
It’s proven in Israel now. I’m in contact with many physicians in Israel. They’re having big problems now; severe cases in hospitals are among vaccinated people. And in the UK also, you had a larger vaccination program and also there are problems.”
Not surprisingly, despite impeccable credentials, Peronne has been censored and shunned for his contrarian views on COVID countermeasures, the COVID gene transfer shots in particular. During his interview, he didn’t mince words, referring to the European COVID-19 policy as “completely stupid.”
Are Prison Camps for the Unjabbed Next?
As predicted, we are rapidly approaching a time when the unvaccinated might be imprisoned for no other reason than their refusal of an experimental gene transfer injection. In early January 2021, a New York bill (A416) was introduced that would give the governor and his or her delegates the power to remove and/or indefinitely detain anyone suspected of being a threat to public health.
Detainees would be kept in a “medical facility or other appropriate facility” — in other words, a medical prison camp — for a maximum of 60 days, although a court could extend the detention in 90-day increments, indefinitely. As reported by Reason :8
“The bill’s language is noticeably vague in defining the parameters around disease type, leaving the government wide latitude in conducting its risk analysis … The legislation was originally introduced during the 2015-16 session in response to the Ebola virus … Though [SARS-CoV-2] is a serious virus, it is also no Ebola, which carries an average case fatality rate of 50%, with some outbreaks reaching as high as 90% …
[T]he vagueness of its approach gives the state a great deal of discretion in locking people up who might have some sort of unnamed illness, as well as people who merely interacted with someone who might have that illness.”
The bill comes up for a vote in the New York Senate and Assembly sometime in the next legislative session, which begins January 5, 2022.9 In addition to indefinite detention for poorly specified reasons, the bill would “require an individual who has been exposed to or infected by a contagious disease to complete an appropriate, prescribed course of treatment, preventive medication or vaccination.”
In other words, this bill legalizes the forced vaccination of anyone who is detained under the mere suspicion of being infected with something or having been in close proximity to someone suspected of being infected. As reported by Rights and Freedoms :10
“There is no explicit reference to what types of contagious diseases qualify a person to be removed from public life, detained in a facility, and forced into medical treatment and vaccination. Anyone can technically be held in isolation until they are deemed non-contagious, which would also raise questions over whether those carrying HIV/AIDS could be released back into society.
The bill has received an overwhelmingly negative response on the NY Senate website.11 Commenters have stated that, ‘this is disturbing and sets up a terrible precedent for future law. The governor can basically detain whoever [he/she] likes on the basis of scanty evidence.
This is un-American. It reminiscent of the Soviet Union locking up political opponents on the basis that they were ‘mentally unstable.’ We CANNOT allow this in our state.’ ‘This is a violation of fundamental human rights. The government should be working for the people, not locking them up without cause.’”
Australia Among the First to Test Medical Imprisonment Model
If you think being tossed into a prison camp without cause or recourse is impossible — after all, this is the United States of America, the land of the free, home of the brave — think again. Australia, another shining star of democracy, has backslidden into totalitarianism at a speed that has everyone’s head spinning.
The Australian government has gone full speed ahead, building a massive COVID quarantine camp, complete with barbed wire fences, guards and video surveillance. Once you’re in, you can’t just waltz out whenever you want to. In the video above, Hayley Hodgson describes what it was like to be detained and transferred to a COVID internment camp, even though she wasn’t sick.
Video surveillance placed her with a friend who had tested positive. They ran her license plate to retrieve her address and showed up at her house, telling her she had to quarantine. Even if you test negative, you still have to spend 14 days in a quarantine camp if you’ve been in close contact with someone who has tested positive. If you refuse, you’re fined $5,000 and forcibly taken there by police anyway.
“You feel like you’re in prison … It’s inhumane what they’re doing,” she says. “You are so small. They just overpower you. You’re literally nothing. It’s like, ‘You do what we say, or … we’ll lock you up for longer.’”
If someone can threaten to extend your stay in this “health hotel,” just what kind of medicine are we dealing with? Clearly, this is a prison model, not a health care model. When have you ever been in a hospital and the nurse tells you, “If you don’t eat your pudding, we’re keeping you here another three months”?
Life in the Biosecurity State
Based on Hodgson’s description of the camp, you don’t get much in terms of medical attention. One shudders to think what would happen to someone who actually had a severe case of COVID in there. Will hazmat suit-equipped police drop you at your room and then you don’t see them again unless you’re caught breaking some rule?
Food is delivered and dropped outside your door once a day. Each room has a 2×2 meter deck where you can go, but if you step outside your room or designated outdoor area without a mask, you’re fined $5,000. She was also told that additional infractions would result in her stay being extended past the 14 days — even though she wasn’t sick and there was no reason to keep her there in the first place.
“You’re literally treated like a prisoner in there,” she says. If you’re triple jabbed and think that means you’ll never see the inside of one of these prisons, think again. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been double or triple jabbed.
If you’re found to have been in close contact with someone who tests positive, in you go. And there’s no legal process you can turn to for help if you disagree with the decree to quarantine. During her stay, three teenagers — all of whom had tested negative — managed to escape the camp. The manhunt that ensued is further evidence that we’re dealing with a prison model and nothing else.
US Has Hundreds of Ready-Made Prison Camps
While Australia is building its second camp, the U.S. already has 800 FEMA camps ready for action. As reported by AMG News :12
“FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations … The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby.
The majority of the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.”
The article goes on to list the many executive orders that can work together to suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, effectively allowing government to seize control over all aspects of life, from food production and transportation to communications and health care functions.
There’s even an executive order that allows the government to mobilize civilians into “work brigades” to carry out whatever functions are deemed necessary, and one that allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate entire communities. To find the FEMA camp nearest you, check out the state listings in the AMG News article.13 Most states have three or more.
Interpret the Media Narrative — They Want Civil War
If you’ve been paying attention over the past couple of years, you may have noticed that you can almost always predict what the next phase of the narrative is going to be. They “advertise” or pave the way for the evolving narrative by putting out articles slanted in a given direction.
Based on recent headlines, I suspect “the powers that be” are hoping to incite a civil war. “CIA Advisor: US Is ‘Closer to Civil War’ Than Thought Possible,” the Daily Mail claims.14 “We’re Edging Closer to Civil War,” an opinion columnist at The New York Times declares.15 “US Closer to Civil War Than Most Would Like to Believe, New Book Says,” announces The Guardian.16
According to Dr. Barbara Walter, a political science professor who serves on the Political Instability Task Force, the U.S. meets several criteria that historically have served as indicators that an “open insurgency” may be imminent. In her book, “How Civil Wars Start,” she writes:17
“No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war. If you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely. And what you would find is that the United States … has entered very dangerous territory.”
Government Has Designated the Enemy, and It’s Us
The problem here is that while authoritarian politicians keep paying lip service to “democracy,” their own actions are anything but. Just who is undermining democracy? If you believe the news and CIA advisers, it’s the people who want the Constitution to stand and be adhered to that are the enemies of democracy. Never mind the mental gymnastics required to get to that conclusion.
It’s not hard to predict a scenario in which authoritarian leaders, acting on a falsely constructed narrative that a civil war is imminent, might start rounding up “dissidents.” And that’s in addition to the already existing, thinly veiled threat of tossing the unvaccinated into indefinite detention.
I agree with Walter’s assessment that we’re in dangerous territory, but not for the same reasons as she suggests. I would also argue that just about every country is a powder keg ready to blow, and for the same reason — people are being tyrannized by their governments and by unelected health authorities that claim powers they do not legally have.
Take England, for example. Entrepreneur and COVID blogger Steve Kirsch was recently notified that an anti-COVID restrictions campaign member had been detained for 28 days under the Mental Health Act for not wearing a mask to a dentist appointment.18 Normally, it’s quite difficult to get a person sectioned under the Mental Health Act, but not anymore.
Refusing to wear a mask apparently qualifies as an acute mental health disorder warranting a month-long stay in a psych ward.
The man, Charlie Cunningham, is reportedly being held at Littlemore Mental Hospital in Oxford, “where he’s being deprived of sleep under the pretext of being suicidal,” according to the woman who contacted Kirsch. She added, “He’s now going to be detained over Christmas and New Year — [he’s] very upset as he feels he’s been kidnapped and being held against his will …”
While all the articles mentioned earlier that warn of civil war blame the decline in democracy on the Trump administration, the Trump administration can hardly be blamed for the civil rights abuses and power grabs that are occurring today. It’s time to judge each tree by its fruit. That said, knowing that a civil war would serve the totalitarian takeover agenda, it would be wise to make sure our resistance remains a peaceful one.
Sources and References
- 1 MSN December 20, 2021
- 2, 3, 4 Masslive.com December 20, 2021
- 5 medRxiv May 6, 2021
- 6 European Journal of Epidemiology September 30, 2021: 1-4
- 7 Gateway Pundit September 18, 2021
- 8 Reason January 5, 2021
- 9, 10 Rights and Freedoms December 18, 2021
- 11 NY State Senate Assembly Bill A416
- 12, 13 AMG News December 7, 2021
- 14 Daily Mail December 20, 2021
- 15 New York Times December 12, 2021 (Archived)
- 16 The Guardian December 20, 2021
- 17 Washington Post December 17, 2021
- 18 Steve Kirsch Substack December 22, 2021
Covidian migration patterns
el gato malo – bad cattitude – december 24, 2021
these graphics are from longtime gatopal™ kbirb who has done so much excellent analysis lo these 21 months.
these are especially great.
let’s look:
(note this is only thru july 2021 and seems to be ongoing and is likely larger by now)
well, that’s not terribly ambiguous, is it? (though based on everything i’ve seen in the mountain west, net migration there looks strongly positive)
we can see that if we get more granular:
big winners: the free states of florida, texas, arizona
big losers: the karentopias of california, new york, illinois
this really speaks volumes.
red v blue gets extreme:
and it sure looks like “access to education” is a major driver.
though this graphic (from NYT ) has interesting overlay too.
speaking as one who spent the summer in a free state only to return to the assault and dingbattery of a masked up, restricted, and vaxxpassed puerto rico, it is JARRING.
once you see that this is not really a thing, that life is normal in half the country, and that continuing to play this game or even care about it is utterly optional, there is no closing your eyes again.
you cannot go back to a mask mandate grocery store and not see all these people as having mental health issues (or at the very least some sort of societal spinal atrophy that renders them unable to support a republic.)
half the people i know are talking about leaving PR. it’s become intolerable, especially once you have seen the options firsthand. hearing the same about new york, SF, LA, etc.
it’s just endless and capricious and increasingly aimed at deliberately making life miserable for any who refuse to comply. this round feels personal. “all you have to do to make the persecution end is comply!” it’s an oppressively ubiquitous mantra and the “jim covid” laws are entering every phase of life.
but one trip to florida and the spell breaks.
you realize you’re being conned because you see it first hand and remember.
maybe you moved there because you wanted your kids to see the inside of a classroom at some point before 2024.
this derangement is going to seriously redraw some american maps.
the damage is not the pandemic, it’s the policy. that’s why this is divided so starkly by donkey vs elephant. covid has been a political, not an epidemiological crisis and remains one.
and the more we can support state’s rights and thereby create more and more varied choice for people to pursue their happiness, the more this flow will become a torrent.
hopefully the last people out of the karen-capitals will remember to turn off the lights when they leave…
NY State Senate Passes Draconian Bill
By Stephen Lendman | April 6, 2021
Passed by New York state senators, draconian NY State Assembly Bill A416 states the following:
“Upon determining by clear and convincing evidence (sic) that the health of others is or may be endangered (sic), the governor may order the removal and/or detention of such… person(s) or group of such persons by issuing a single order (sic).”
“Identifying such persons either by name or by a reasonably specific description of the individuals or group being detained,” they shall be indefinitely held “in a medical facility or other appropriate private facility.”
The measure targets individuals unwilling to self-inflict harm by hazardous to health covid jabs.
If taken, they risk contraction of the illness they’re supposed to protect against — but don’t.
They also risk possible irreversible harm to health or death if taken as directed.
If New York Governor Cuomo signs this draconian measure into law, and if similar measures are adopted by other states and/or congressional legislation is passed and signed into law on this issue, preserving and protecting health by refusing to be jabbed with experimental, unapproved, toxic drugs could be considered the equivalent of a criminal offense.
Involuntary/indefinite detention if ordered will become de facto concentration camp imprisonment.
Under federal law, experimental drugs cannot be mandated.
The Nuremberg Code requires voluntary consent on matters relating to human health.
It prohibits mandatory participation in medical experiments.
Procedures must yield positive results that benefit individuals and society.
None of the above applies to mass-jabbing with toxic, experimental drugs that don’t protect and risk serious harm to health or death.
Under NY State Assembly Bill A416, healthy individuals and ones they came in contact with can be labeled “disease carriers” — by politicians, their public heath handmaidens, and/or go-along judicial authorities.
Longterm involuntarily detention may follow under draconian conditions able to destroy health.
If in the “opinion of (New York) governor” Cuomo or his minions, anyone considered a public health threat — even when healthy and threatening no one — can be forcibly interned against their will.
According to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR):
“Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person.”
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention.”
“No one shall be deprived of his (or her) liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.”
“Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release.”
“Anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his (or her) detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful.
“Anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.”
Depriving individuals of liberty for refusal to self-inflict harm by jabbing with hazardous drugs is a flagrant breach of international law.
Is that where things are heading in New York?
Is something similar coming in other states, possibly nationwide in the US?
Will rule of law protections no longer apply when conflict with federal, state or local diktats?
Is guilt by accusation the new standard?
If NY State Assembly Bill A416 and similar measures are adopted in the US, rights guaranteed by international law and the Constitution no longer will apply.
Tyranny enforced by police state harshness will be the new standard — including indefinite detention of anyone accused of virtually anything no matter how untrue.
What’s going on in the US and West ominously resembles how the scourge of Nazism imposed tyrannical rule in Germany.
Is that where things are heading?
Fundamental rights are disappearing in plain sight while Americans and others in the West are distracted by bread, circuses, and establishment media propaganda.
New York’s Covid Vaccine Passport Makes No Sense
By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute For Political Economy | March 29, 2021
NY Governor Cuomo is establishing a Covid passport that will show vaccination or a recent negative test. It will serve as permission to enter events or venues.
Will this passport be efficacious, or is its purpose to get us accustomed to a “your papers please” way of life?
Allegedly, the combination of people with vaccinations and those recovered from infection have, or are, bringing about “herd immunity.” If so, what is the point of a passport?
There are credible reports that some who have been vaccinated have nevertheless come down with Covid, which raises doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine. There are other reports that antibodies produced by the vaccines are not long lasting.
How recent must the Covid test be to make the passport valid. A person could have a negative test and catch Covid on the way home. If the passport relies on a negative test, the passport will have to expire after some designated period unless the passport is renewed with a new test.
There is also the problem that the widely used PCR test produces false negatives and false positives. In other words, is the information on which the passport is issued valid information?
We can laugh at the passport as a silly over-reaction to a virus that in most cases is hardly more dangerous than flu, or we can understand it as a control measure over our freedom of movement and association. We are the safer if we view it as the latter.
Police already have too much power to invade homes without warrants and to stop and search people on the streets without warrants. “Probable cause” has been used to curtail civil liberty.
I am convinced that no health purpose will be served by Covid passports, and that the public should protest the introduction of a Soviet-style internal passport.
Once established, the Covid passport will be a boon for Big Pharma. A yearly booster shot will be decreed, and without it your passport will expire.
Keep in mind that Florida avoided lockdowns and mask mandates and has no worse infection and death rate than lockdown states.
Notice also that many highly qualified experts have criticized the lockdowns, mask mandates, use of untested vaccines, and the prohibition on using safe effective treatments such as HCQ and Ivermectin. Why were their voices censored and the information kept from the public? The only explanation I can think of is that Covid is being used for an unstated agenda. We should not be deceived into cooperating with this unstated agenda.
A democracy that censors expert testimony and prohibits public debate is well on its way to a police state.
A public that can be stampeeded by orchestrated fear into being jabbed with vaccines that could be more dangerous than Covid is not a public that can expect to remain in freedom.
Governor Andrew Cuomo Imposes Vaccination Passports in New York
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | March 4, 2021
Some politicians can’t stop coming up with new ways of bossing people around and preventing the return of normal life, all in the name of countering coronavirus. A prime example of such coronavirus tyrants is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
This week, Cuomo, who has been imposing on people in New York for a year some of the harshest coronavirus-related restrictions in America, announced he is rolling out yet another rights abuse. Cuomo is requiring in a new “pilot program” that people obtain and present vaccination passports to gain entrance to certain places and take part in various activities that have been curtailed by government over the last year.
Cuomo calls the vaccination passports Excelsior Passes. No matter the name the state’s vaccination passports are marketed under, they are a mechanism for government tracking people’s movements, pressuring people into taking experimental coronavirus vaccines that carry risk of serious injury and death, and implementing a vaccinations-based caste system.
Elizabeth Elizalde writes at the New York Post that in the New York state pilot program people are being required to present their vaccination passports “in order to enter sports arenas, theaters and other businesses.” To receive a vaccination passport, Elizalde writes, a person must prove he has received one of the experimental coronavirus vaccines or that he has recently tested negative for coronavirus.
With time — after the experimental coronavirus vaccines have become more widely available — expect Cuomo to adjust the program so proof of injection with one of the not-really vaccines will be the only means to receive an Excelsior Pass and, thereby, the ability to take part legally in many activities.
Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute
Cuomo and the Failure of Covid Absolutism
By James Bovard | AIER | February 24, 2021
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is falling from grace at epic speed. His administration is now the target of a Justice Department probe for policies that resulted in the death of one out of eight nursing home residents in the state. Regardless of whether the New York legislature impeaches Cuomo, the standard he championed poses a continuing peril.
From the start of the Covid pandemic, the media idolized Cuomo for his “safety through absolute power” mantra. Last March 20, Cuomo imposed a statewide lockdown on 20 million New Yorkers, closing schools and businesses. Cuomo labeled his decree a “pause” and declared: “If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” At that point, most counties in New York state had five or fewer people who have tested positive for coronavirus.
Cuomo’s “just one life” standard for lockdowns should have obliterated his credibility. Instead, Cuomo’s maxim was treated as a triumph of idealism and benevolence. Cuomo’s power grab was enabled by media allies that fanned hysteria. As AIER editorial director Jeffrey Tucker recently noted, the New York Times’ Donald G. McNeil Jr. “was the first reporter from a major media venue to stir up virus panic and advocate for extreme lockdown measures… The Times allowed its voice to be used to promote a primal and primitive disease panic, which they surely knew would create a cultural/political frenzy.” Presidential candidate Joe Biden hailed Cuomo last Spring for setting the “gold standard” for leadership on Covid.
After Cuomo swayed the New York 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. A New York democratic legislator said that Cuomo was “inclined towards tyranny. But in a crisis that’s what people want.”
A New Yorker profile, entitled “Andrew Cuomo, King of New York,” 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, bankrupting business, and causing two million people to lose their jobs vindicated government as “a force for good.”
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace declared that Cuomo is “everything Trump isn’t: honest, direct, brave.” Entertainment Weekly hailed Cuomo as “the hero that America never realized it needed until he was on our television screens every night.” As National Review recently noted, local reporters failed to ask questions on his nursing home edict “for months, as the governor held his much-praised daily press briefings about the pandemic. There were literally hundreds of hours of Cuomo press conferences in the first half of 2020 where not a single question was asked about nursing homes.”
The docile media paved the way to Cuomo winning an Emmy award for his “masterful use of television” during the pandemic. The media’s valorization of Cuomo helped make his self-tribute book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, a bestseller.
Cuomo has always known how to milk the media. When he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, he explained to the Washington Post in 1999 how he would fix HUD’s dismal image: “The PR is the most important thing I do … Eighty percent of the battle is communications.” (I christened Cuomo as “the Clinton administration’s most megalomaniacal cabinet secretary in a 2000 American Spectator piece titled, “Andy At It Again: How to Keep Reinventing HUD to Advance Yourself.”) Flash forward to last June, and Cuomo prematurely issued a poster celebrating his and New York state’s victory over Covid. The political art (sold for $14.50 plus shipping and handling) featured a steep mountain symbolizing the rise and fall of Covid cases. The poster was plastered with insipid phrases such as “The sun on the other side, “The power of ‘We,’” “Winds of Fear,” “Follow the Facts,” and “Love Community Support,” and included a jibe against Trump. Though poster sales failed to deter second and third waves of Covid outbreaks, the PR campaign further encouraged the media to focus on Cuomo’s words instead of his deeds.
During the pandemic, “legitimacy” came not from adhering to the U.S. and state Constitutions but from continually invoking “science and data,” as Cuomo did. . Cuomo’s entitlement to absolute power came from modeling concocted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a Washington State-based institution bankrolled by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel noted last week in an AIER analysis, IHME forecasts presumed a death rate 30 times higher than the rate that actually occurred. That horrendous miscalculation sufficed for one governor after another to nullify Americans’ freedom with lockdown orders. Absurd statistical extrapolations forecasting future harm made tyranny irrelevant.
Cuomo describes himself as a “great progressive,” perhaps thereby entitling himself to any power he presumes necessary “for the good of the people,” Bill of Rights be damned. November, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York state restrictions that limited religious gatherings to ten or fewer people while permitting far more leeway for businesses to operate, declaring that Cuomo’s rules were “far more restrictive than any Covid-related regulations that have previously come before the Court… and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus.” Cuomo’s allies in the liberal establishment reacted with horror to the limit on his sway. An American Civil Liberties Union official fretted to the New York Times that “the freedom to worship… does not include a license to harm others or endanger public health.” Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe and Cornell professor Michael Dorf babbled that the ruling signaled that the Supreme Court belonged in “the theocratic and misogynist country in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”
Cuomo remained revered even though his repressive policies failed to prevent New York from having among the nation’s highest Covid death rates. But a Justice Department probe into his nursing home policies launched last August may be his undoing. New York state reported barely half of the total of more than 12,000 New York nursing home patients who died of Covid. Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, told Democratic legislative leaders that “basically, we froze” when the feds demanded information. “We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice… was going to be used against us,” DeRosa said according to a leaked transcript.
But Cuomo’s culpability goes beyond hiding corpses. Early in the pandemic, he pushed to include a legislative provision written by the Greater New York Hospital Association to give a waiver of liability to nursing homes and hospitals whose patients died of Covid. A report last month by the New York Attorney General warned, “The immunity laws could be wrongly used to protect any individual or entity from liability, even if those decisions were not made in good faith or motivated by financial incentives.” As the Guardian noted, “Cuomo’s political machine received more than $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA), its executives and its lobbying firms.”
But Cuomo’s credibility should have been dethroned long before the latest disclosures. As early as last May, barely two months after the start of the state lockdown, a New York Post columnist groused: “So Gov. Andrew Cuomo killed Grandma and cratered New York’s economy. But he looked good doing it.” Cuomo’s cachet derived almost entirely from media scoring that until recently ignored almost all of the harms he inflicted.
Cuomo and other politicians have used Covid policy lodestars that were akin to crossing the Pacific Ocean with navigators who insisted the earth was flat. Melinda Gates admitted last December: “What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.” The politicians who imposed shutdowns based on data from the Gates’ funded by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation apparently never bothered to estimate the collateral damage from their decrees. Similar myopia spurred crackdowns and restrictions in many states that helped cause the sharpest reduction in Americans’ life expectancy since World War Two.
Unfortunately, there is no indication that either politicians or the media have recognized the authoritarian dangers inherent in governors or presidents claiming a right to boundless power to save “just one life.”
A similar standard is helping justify keeping schools closed in many areas. Teachers’ unions have rallied around the motto: “If one teacher dies, isn’t that too many?” But like Cuomo’s shutdowns, that standard ignores the horrific collateral damage on American children. A Journal of the American Medical Association analysis concluded that shutting down the schools would reduce the current crop of students’ collective years of life by more than five million, based on “lower income, reduced educational attainment, and worse health outcomes.” It remains to be seen how much, if any, the role of the well-being of children plays in school policy in the coming months.
While it is unlikely that the media lapdogs who adore Cuomo and other prominent politicians will admit their follies, the exposure of hard facts may help blunt the next stampede to submission. The Justice Department investigation into nursing home policies that boosted Covid death tolls in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania could tarnish some of the nation’s most aggressive Covid lockdowners. Other investigations by the media or private groups could expose far more evidence of misconduct or of gross negligence that boosted Covid death tolls.
In a tour of television talk shows shortly after President Biden was inaugurated, Cuomo recited his latest catchphrase: “Incompetent government kills people.” This intended slapdown of Trump is recoiling badly on the New York governor. If Cuomo is impeached or forced to resign for his Covid fiascos, maybe he could score plenty of media appearances with a new slogan: “Absolute power with impunity kills.”
Cuomo blames nursing homes for following his Covid-19 order that KILLED PATIENTS – after removing it from website
RT | May 27, 2020
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has stealthily attempted to rewrite history, deleting his controversial order requiring nursing homes to admit Covid-19 patients from the state health website and blaming facilities for obeying it.
After being lambasted in the press for the March 25 executive order that forced New York elder care facilities to accept patients infected with the highly contagious virus, Cuomo attempted to blame the nursing homes for not disobeying his orders during a Wednesday press conference.
“The obligation is on the nursing home to say, ‘I can’t take a Covid-positive person,’” the governor insisted. “If they said ‘I can’t take the person,’ they can’t take the person! So that’s how it works.”
The coronavirus has cut a devastating swath through New York’s nursing homes, killing more than 5,800 people in long-term care facilities since the pandemic began – nearly a fifth of the state’s Covid-19 deaths so far, according to AP statistics compiled on Thursday. The policy ultimately sent over 4,500 recovering coronavirus patients to nursing homes, which Cuomo himself called “the optimum feeding ground for this virus.”
But the executive order itself leaves little room for disobedience, reading (in underlined text, no less), “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [Nursing Home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” Elsewhere in the document, facilities are advised they “must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals” so long as they’ve been deemed medically stable – no excuses allowed. Facilities aren’t even permitted to test incoming patients.
But that same order, titled “Advisory: Hospital Discharges and Admissions to Nursing Homes,” was apparently removed from the New York healthcare website early this month, according to Fox News, which discovered its absence on Tuesday. Unfortunately for Cuomo’s revisionism, it’s still available in the Wayback Machine. The governor issued a revised directive on May 10, barring hospitals from sending patients back to nursing homes unless they tested negative for the virus. However, his communications director denied the more recent order represented a “reversal” of the old one so much as “build[ing] on” it.
By Saturday, however, Cuomo was blaming the Trump administration for the ill-advised Covid-19 mandate, declaring New York was merely “following the president’s agencies’ guidance” and “follow[ing] what the Republican Administration said to do.” While the governor’s office claimed he was referring to a March directive from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, that order merely required nursing homes to “admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their facility, including… from hospitals where a case of Covid-19 was present” and even advised setting aside a unit to quarantine patients returning from hospitals – a safety measure notably missing from Cuomo’s executive order.
The New York governor’s handling of the nursing home situation has gotten decidedly mixed reviews, with a recent poll showing just 44 percent of state voters approve of the job he’s done managing the virus in state elder care facilities – while 48 percent give him a thumbs-down. Published Wednesday, the Siena College poll reveals a predictable partisan split, with 54 percent of Democrats approving of how he’s managed the nursing home problem as opposed to 55 percent of Republicans disapproving. Independents were the most vehement in their disdain, with 61 percent viewing his response negatively.
Cuomo’s overall approval ratings have also slipped since the early days of the pandemic, when he won over Democrats by taking an oppositional stance to President Donald Trump. Approval for his handling of the outbreak in general sits at 76 percent for May, down from 84 percent last month, while his overall job approval rating has slid to 63 percent from 71 percent in April.
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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